THE words, “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life,” are held to involve a contrast between the “letter” of the law and the “spirit” of the law; they are held to mean that literalism is deadly, while attention to great principles keeps a man intellectually and spiritually alive.
Thus has one of the greatest utterances in the New Testament been reduced to comparative triviality—a triviality with a kernel of truth in it, to be sure, but triviality all the same. The triviality, indeed, is merely relative; no doubt it is important to observe that attention to the general sense of a book or a law is far better than such a reading of details as that the context in which the details are found is ignored. But all that is quite foreign to the meaning of the Apostle in this passage, and-is, though quite true and important in its place, trivial in comparison with the tremendous thing Paul is here endeavouring to say.
What Paul is really doing here is not contrasting the “letter” of the law with the “spirit” of the law,
but contrasting “the law of God” with “the Spirit of God.” When he says, “The letter killeth,” he is making no contemptuous reference to a pedantic literalism which shrivels the soul; but he is setting forth the terrible majesty of God’s law. The letter, the “thing written,” in the law of God, says Paul, pronounces a dread sentence of death upon the transgressor; but the Holy Spirit of God, as distinguished from the law, gives life.
The law of God, Paul means, is, as law, external. It is God’s holy will to which we must conform, but it contains in itself no promise of its fulfilment. It is one thing to have it obeyed. In fact, because of the sinfulness of our hearts, because of the power of the flesh, the recognition of God’s law only makes sin take on the definite form of transgression; it only makes sin more exceeding sinful. The law of God was written on tables of stone or on the rolls of the Old Testament books, but it was quite a different thing to get it written in the hearts and lives of the people. So it is to-day. The text is of very wide application. The law of God, however it comes to us, is “letter”; it is a “thing written,” external to the hearts and lives of men. It is written in the Old Testament; it is written in the Sermon on the Mount; it is written in Jesus’ stupendous command of love for God and one’s neighbour; it is written in whatever way we become conscious of the commands of God. Let no one say that such an extension of the text involves that very anti-historical modernizing which we have just denounced; on the contrary, it is amply justified by Paul himself. “When the Gentiles,” Paul says, “which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves.” The Old Testament law is just as clear, authentic presentation of a law of God under which all men stand.
And that law, according to Paul, issues a dreadful sentence of eternal death. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die”; not the hearer of the law is justified but the doer of it. And, alas! none are doers; all have sinned. The law of God is holy and just and good; it is inexorable; and we have fallen under its just condemnation.
That is at bottom what Paul means by the words, “The letter killeth.” He does not mean that attention to pedantic details shrivels and deadens the soul. No doubt that is true, at least within certain limits; it is
a useful thought. But it is trivial indeed compared with what Paul means. Something far more majestic, far more terrible, is meant by the Pauline phrase. The “letter” that the Apostle means is the same as the curse of God’s law that he speaks of in Galatians; it is the dreadful handwriting of ordinances that was against us; and the death with which it kills is the eternal death of those who are for ever separated from God.
But that is not all of the text. “The letter killeth,” Paul says, “but the Spirit giveth life.” There is no doubt about what he means by “the Spirit.” He does not mean the “spirit of the law,” as contrasted with the “letter”; he certainly does not mean the lax interpretation of God’s commands which is dictated by human lust or pride; he certainly does not mean the spirit of man. No real student of Paul, whatever be his own religious views, can doubt, I think, but that the Apostle means the Spirit of God. God’s law brings death because of sin, but God’s Spirit applying to the soul the redemption offered by Christ, brings life. The thing that is written killeth; but the Holy Spirit, in the new birth, or, as Paul says, the new creation, giveth life.
The contrast runs all through the New Testament. Hopelessness under the law is described, for example, in the seventh chapter of Romans: “Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death”?
But this hopelessness is transcended by the Gospel. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” The law’s just sentence of condemnation was borne for us by Christ who suffered in our stead; the handwriting of ordinances which was against us—the dreadful “letter”—was nailed to the cross, and we have a fresh start in the full favour of God. And in addition to this new and right relation to God, the Spirit of God also gives the sinner a new birth and makes him a new creature. The New Testament from beginning to end deals gloriously with this work of grace. The giving of life of which Paul speaks in this text is the new birth, the new creation; it is Christ who liveth in us. Here is the fulfilment of the great prophecy of Jeremiah: “But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts.” The law is no longer for the Christian a command which it is for him by his own strength to obey, but its requirements are fulfilled
through the mighty power of the Holy Spirit. That is the glorious freedom of the Gospel. The Gospel does not abrogate God’s law, but it makes men love it with all their heart.
How is it with us? The law of God stands over us: we have offended against it in thought, word, and deed; its majestic “letter” pronounces a sentence of death against our sin. Shall we obtain a specious security by ignoring God’s law, and by taking refuge in an easier law of our own devising? Or shall the Lord Jesus, as He is offered to us in the Gospel, wipe out the sentence of condemnation that was against us, and shall the Holy Spirit write God’s law in our heart, and make us doers of the law and not hearers only? So, and only so, will the great text be applied to us—”The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.”—(Prof. Machen’s “What is Faith?” p. 192).