2 Corinthians 3:4–6

2 Corinthians 3:4 — "Such confidence we have through Christ toward God" The Greek word rendered "confidence" (πεποίθησιν, pepoithēsin) carries the sense of settled trust, even bold reliance. Crucially, Paul does not say the confidence is in Christ as a distant guarantor; it is through Christ (dia Christou) and it is directed toward God (pros ton Theon). This double prepositional structure is theologically precise: Christ is the mediating axis through whom the apostle — and by extension every believer — is able to stand before the Father. The confidence is not psychological self-assurance but the objective ground of grace. Paul is transitioning from the preceding verses (3:1–3), where he has defended his apostolic credentials not by letters of recommendation but by the Corinthian community itself as a letter of Christ written by the Spirit. His "boldness" flows from having seen that divine work accomplished in his ministry.

2 Corinthians 3:5 — "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves… but our sufficiency is from God" The Greek word for "sufficient" (hikanoi) and its cognates appear three times across verses 5–6, forming a deliberate rhetorical pattern. Paul first denies self-sufficiency emphatically: ouch hoti hikanoi esmen aph' heautōn logisasthai ti hōs ex heautōn — "not that we are competent to reckon anything as coming from ourselves." The phrase "to account" or "to reckon" (logisasthai) has a bookkeeping flavor, suggesting that Paul is specifically rejecting any claim to credit his apostolic fruit to his own account. This is not false modesty; it is a theological assertion about the creature's absolute dependency on the Creator for any good work (cf. Jn 15:5). The positive counterpart — "our sufficiency is from God" (hē de hikanotēs hēmōn ek tou Theou) — makes God the sole origin (ek) of ministerial competence. This verse is one of Scripture's clearest witnesses to what Catholic theology calls the gratuity of grace: no one initiates or sustains their own spiritual fruitfulness apart from divine enablement.

2 Corinthians 3:6 — "Who also made us sufficient as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." God's act of "making sufficient" (hikanōsen) is an aorist in Greek — a completed, historical action. Paul is not speaking of an ongoing personal sanctification in this moment but of the specific commissioning of apostolic ministry. The phrase "servants of a new covenant" (diakonous kainēs diathēkēs) directly echoes Jeremiah 31:31–34, the sole Old Testament passage to use the precise phrase "new covenant." For Paul, the Jeremianic promise has been fulfilled: God has not amended the old covenant but inaugurated an entirely new one, written not on stone tablets but on human hearts by the Spirit. The contrast between "letter" (gramma) and "Spirit" (pneuma) is the passage's theological nerve. The "letter" here should not be read as the entirety of the Old Testament (Paul elsewhere insists the Law is holy and good — Rom 7:12) but as the Mosaic covenant understood as a legal code standing apart from the inward renewal that only the Spirit can effect. The Law diagnoses the wound; the Spirit heals it. As Paul says elsewhere, the Law was a paidagōgos — a tutor leading to Christ (Gal 3:24). The letter, taken in isolation from its fulfillment in Christ, condemns because it demands what fallen human nature cannot supply. The Spirit, poured out through Christ's paschal mystery, does not merely demand but enables — it gives the very life it requires.

Catholic tradition draws on these verses with particular richness at the intersection of grace, ministry, and the theology of the new covenant.

The Council of Trent explicitly cited verse 5 in its Decree on Justification (Session VI, Ch. 8) to underscore that the beginning of justification — including faith itself — cannot be attributed to human initiative but must be referred to God's prevenient grace. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 1996) echoes this: "Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call." Verse 5 is thus not merely a statement about apostolic humility but a window into the universal structure of grace.

St. Augustine, whose anti-Pelagian controversies were shaped in part by this passage, wrote in De Spiritu et Littera (On the Spirit and the Letter, 412 AD) — a work devoted almost entirely to 2 Cor 3:6 — that the "letter" is any divine commandment that remains external to the will, while the Spirit is the interior charity that God writes on the heart, enabling obedience. "The law was given that grace might be sought; grace was given that the law might be fulfilled," he famously concluded.

St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 106, a. 2) identifies the "new law" precisely as the grace of the Holy Spirit given interiorly, with Scripture and sacraments serving as secondary, instrumental causes. The New Covenant is thus not primarily a new text but a new interiority — a transformed heart.

Vatican II's Dei Verbum (§4) also resonates here: the fullness of revelation is not a written code but a Person — Jesus Christ — who sends the Spirit to lead the Church into all truth. Ministry, accordingly, is never a merely human enterprise but an extension of Christ's own mediation.

Contemporary Catholics encounter this passage at the intersection of two persistent temptations: the temptation to self-sufficient activism and the temptation to reduce the faith to external observance. In an age of metrics, platform-building, and ministry branding, verse 5 is a rebuke and a relief: our sufficiency is from God. For the parish volunteer burning out, the catechist who feels inadequate, the priest who doubts his homily's worth — Paul's words reframe the question entirely. Effectiveness in ministry is never the product of talent or technique alone; it is the overflow of divine commissioning.

Verse 6 speaks directly to the temptation toward a merely legalistic or habitual Catholicism — attending Mass, following rules, fulfilling obligations — without the interior transformation the Spirit alone can accomplish. The sacraments are not magical rites that function apart from the Spirit's interior work; they are the Spirit's chosen instruments for writing the new covenant on the heart. Ask yourself: am I seeking the gramma — the external form — or the pneuma — the living encounter? Am I fulfilling the letter of prayer or actually praying? This passage invites a daily renewal of surrender to the Spirit as the only source of genuine Christian life and fruitfulness.