Why does St. Paul call the Law, the Ten Commandments, “the ministry of death” in our reading from 2 Corinthians this morning? Well, the answer is quite simple: It’s not because the Law is evil. It’s not because we should view the Law of God like we view a horror movie villain. It’s because the Law of God that we should rejoice in always kills us. We cannot keep the Law, can’t fulfill its demands. God gave the law and said, “do this and the Law will give you life.” But we cannot keep that law, and so the law has brought us death. It has set our sins before us, condemned us for our unrighteousness and showed us that we have no hope of meriting eternal life. And while doing this, while being the ministry of death, the Law of God remained holy and glorious, so holy and glorious that Moses had to veil his face to hide its majesty from the Israelites.
But now an even greater ministry has come to us, the ministry promised on every page of the Scriptures, the ministry that Paul’s fellow Jews would not let themselves see, much to his sorrow. The ministry of the Spirit, the ministry of righteousness, the ministry of life has arrived. And it has arrived through death. Through the blood that Christ poured out upon the cross, He has given you the obedience to the commandments that you could not give. Through His anguish and agony, He has given you the right to possess peace and paradise forever. Through His final breath, He has breathed life back into your body, the same body that was killed by the law. And He has done all of this so that He could pick you up in His resurrected arms and gather you into the radiant glory of His kingdom forever.
The ministry of death was not the reason God created the heavens and the earth. The ministry of life was. God did not give the ministry of death to leave you dead. He gave it to pave the way for the better word that would clothe you in unfathomable majesty. And if God shook the very foundations of the earth through the ministry of death, we will find even more glory in the greater ministry that was poured out upon us in the waters of our baptism.
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