An Epistle of Christ

by Skip Heitzig | March 21, 2025

In the time of the early church, there were many itinerant preachers who went from congregation to congregation. It was a blessing, but it wasn't always clear who these guys were. Some of them were using their ministry to make a profit, "peddling the word of God" (2 Corinthians 2:17).

Some carried letters from an important Jewish source that introduced them, as if to say, "You can trust this person." It's what Paul referenced in 2 Corinthians 3:1, where he talked about "epistles of commendation."

But Paul knew that the proof of his ministry was in the believers in Christ. "You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men" (v. 2). Instead of measuring his importance by letters of commendation, he measured it by the fruit in their lives. They had been radically transformed. That's all the letter he needed. People could see and read their lives.

It's the same with you. You are known and read by people in your family, people you work with, and people in your neighborhood. "Clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart" (v. 3).

The phrase "written in our hearts" should ring a bell to you. It alludes to Jeremiah 31:31-34, where the prophet announced that God would establish a new covenant, written on the heart. The allusion is that we are a living epistle, a living letter. People can see our transformed lives. That's all the endorsement we need.

"And we have such trust through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God" (2 Corinthians 3:4-5). Paul was saying, "My qualification is not my skill set. My qualification is the power of the Holy Spirit operating in my life as seen in your lives because I led you to faith in Christ."

Paul could have boasted of his résumé as a skilled and brilliant academic. He gave his background in Philippians 3: "A Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee…concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless" (vv. 5-6). But then he said, "Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord" (v. 8). He was boasting in the LORD. "Our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant" (2 Corinthians 3:5-6).

Now look at verse 18: "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord." Whatever you behold is what you become. Some of us get so distracted every day looking at our phones, and minutes turn into hours.

But if you gaze upon Christ and look to Him and behold His glory and spend time with Him, you become like what you behold. He can take you to maturity. He can take you to salvation. So look to Jesus, the "author and finisher of our faith" (Hebrews 12:2).

There's a little poem that says, "You are writing a gospel, a chapter each day, by deeds that you do, by words that you say. Men read what you write, whether faithless or true; say, what is the gospel according to you?"

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