On the Spirit and the Letter 18–33

This thought makes one godly, for godliness is true wisdom (I mean the godliness that the Greeks call θεοσέβεια); for it was commended when it was said to man, as is read in the book of Job, “Behold, godliness is wisdom.” Θεοσέβεια, if it were interpreted by rendering the origin of the word in Latin, could be called “worship of God,” which consists above all in this, that the soul should not be ungrateful to him. Hence, in that most true and unique sacrifice itself, we are admonished to give thanks to the Lord our God. But the soul will be ungrateful if it attributes to itself what it has from God, and especially righteousness, by whose works, as though its own and obtained by itself for itself, it is puffed up, not in a common way, as over riches or beauty of limbs or eloquence and the other goods, whether external or of body or of mind, which even the wicked commonly have, but, as it were, wisely, as over those things which are properly the goods of the good. Driven by this vice from the stability of the divine substance, even certain great men have slipped down into the shame of idolatry. Hence the same apostle, in the same letter in which he is a vehement defender of grace, when he had said that he was a debtor to Greeks and barbarians, to the wise and the foolish, and therefore, as far as he was concerned, ready to preach the gospel also to those who were at Rome, says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel; for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written: ‘But the righteous man lives by faith.’” This is the righteousness of God, which, veiled in the Old Testament, is revealed in the New; which is called the righteousness of God because by imparting it he makes people righteous, just as “salvation is the Lord's,” by which he makes people saved. And this is the faith from which and to which it is revealed: from the faith, namely, of those who proclaim to the faith of those who obey. By this faith of Jesus Christ, that is, the faith that Christ has conferred on us, we believe that it is from God, and will be more fully, that we live righteously. Hence we give thanks to him with that godliness by which he alone is to be worshiped.

Not without reason does the apostle turn at this point to mention with detestation those who, through that vice I mentioned above, light and puffed up and lifted by themselves as through empty air, where they could not rest but broke and burst apart, fell into the fictions of idols as onto stones. For since he had commended the godliness of faith, by which, justified by God, we ought to be grateful, bringing in, as it were, the contrary for us to detest, he says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of those men who hold down the truth in iniquity; because what is known of God is manifest among them, for God has manifested it to them. For his invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, his eternal power also and divinity, so that they are without excuse. Because, knowing God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened; claiming to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and serpents.” See how he did not call them ignorant of the truth, but said that they held down the truth in iniquity. And because it occurred to the mind to ask how they could have had knowledge of the truth, to whom God had not given the law, he did not keep silent about this either, how they could have had it; for he said that through the visible things of creation they had come to an understanding of the invisible things of the Creator, since indeed great minds persisted in seeking in this way and were able to find in this way. Where then was the ungodliness? Clearly in that, having known God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became vain in their thoughts. Vanity is properly the disease of those who deceive themselves, while they seem to themselves to be something when they are nothing. In short, overshadowing themselves with this swelling of pride, whose foot that holy singer prays may not come to him, who said, “In your light we shall see light,” they turned away from the very light of unchangeable truth, and their foolish heart was darkened. For it was not a wise heart, although they had known God, but rather a foolish one, since they did not glorify him as God or give thanks. For he said to man, “Behold, godliness is wisdom.” And therefore, claiming to be wise, which must be understood as nothing other than attributing this very thing to themselves, they became fools.

What need is there now to speak of what follows? For through this ungodliness those men (those men, I say, who were able to know the Creator through the creature), where they slipped, since God resists the proud, and where they sank, the sequence of the letter itself teaches better than we could recount here. For we have not undertaken in this work to expound this letter, but we are striving, chiefly by its testimony, to show as far as we can that we are divinely helped to work righteousness, not in that God gave a law full of good and holy commands, but in that our will itself, without which we cannot do good, is helped and raised up by the imparting of the Spirit of grace; without which help that teaching is the letter that kills, since it holds people guilty of transgression rather than justifying the ungodly. For just as for those who knew the Creator through the creature that very knowledge was of no profit for salvation, because, knowing God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, claiming to be wise, so those who through the law of God know how man should live are not justified by that knowledge, because, wishing to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted to the righteousness of God.

It is worth considering, then, how the law of deeds, that is, of works, by which that boasting is not excluded, and the law of faith, by which it is excluded, differ from each other, if we are able to notice and distinguish it. For someone might quickly say that the law of works is in Judaism and the law of faith in Christianity, because circumcision and other such works belong to the law which Christian discipline no longer observes. But how misleading this distinction is we have long been striving to show, and to those quick at discerning, especially you and such as you, we have perhaps already shown it; nevertheless, since it is a great matter, it is not unfitting that we dwell again and again on making it clear with more testimonies. For he calls that very law, by which no one is justified, the law that came in so that the offense might abound; yet, lest anyone ignorant should on this account find fault with it and accuse it as sacrilegious, he defends it, saying, “What then shall we say? Is the law sin? Far from it; but I did not know sin except through the law; for I would not have known concupiscence if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ So sin, taking occasion through the commandment, worked in me all concupiscence.” He also says, “The law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good; but sin, so that it might appear as sin, worked death in me through what is good.” That, then, is the letter that kills, which says, “You shall not covet.” Of it he also says what I mentioned a little before: “For through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been manifested, witnessed by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith of Jesus Christ for all who believe; for there is no distinction. For all have sinned and lack the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of former sins in God's forbearance, to show his righteousness at this time, so that he might be just and the justifier of him who is of the faith of Jesus.” Then he adds what we are now treating: “Where then is your boasting? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.” This law of deeds, then, is the one that says, “You shall not covet,” since through it comes the knowledge of sin. I want to know, then, if anyone dares to tell me, whether the law of faith does not say, “You shall not covet.” For if it does not say it, what reason is there why, placed under it, we should not sin securely and with impunity? For those also thought the apostle said this, of whom he says, “And as some claim we say, ‘Let us do evil that good may come’; their condemnation is just.” But if it too says, “You shall not covet,” as so many gospel and apostolic commands never cease to testify and proclaim, why is it not also called a law of deeds? For it is not the case that, because it does not have the works of the old sacraments, namely circumcision and the rest, the works it has in its own sacraments, suited to this time, are not works. Or was the question about the works of the sacraments, when the law was mentioned because through it comes the knowledge of sin and therefore no one is justified by it? Hence boasting was not excluded by that law, but by the law of faith, by which the righteous man lives. But does not the knowledge of sin come also through this law, since it too says, “You shall not covet”?

What, then, is the difference? I will say it briefly. What the law of works commands by threatening, the law of faith obtains by believing. The one says, “You shall not covet”; the other says, “When I knew that no one can be continent unless God gives it (and this very thing belonged to wisdom, to know whose gift this was), I went to the Lord and besought him.” This is that wisdom which is called godliness, by which the Father of lights is worshiped, from whom is every best gift and every perfect gift. And he is worshiped by the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, so that his worshiper may boast not in himself but in him. And so by the law of works God says, “Do what I command”; by the law of faith it is said to God, “Give what you command.” For the law commands for this reason, to remind what faith should do; that is, so that the one to whom it is commanded, if he cannot yet do it, may know what to ask for; but if he can do it at once and does it obediently, he ought also to know by whose gift he can. “For we have not received the spirit of this world,” says that same most steadfast preacher of grace, “but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may know the things that have been given us by God.” And what is the spirit of this world but the spirit of pride, by which the foolish heart of those was darkened who, having known God, did not glorify him as God by giving thanks? Nor are those deceived by any other spirit who, ignorant of the righteousness of God and wishing to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. Hence it seems to me that he is more a son of faith who knows from whom he may hope for what he does not yet have than one who attributes to himself what he has; although to both of these is to be preferred the one who both has and knows from whom he has it, provided he does not believe himself already to be what he is not yet, lest he fall into the fault of that Pharisee who, although he gave thanks to God for what he had, yet asked for nothing to be given him, as though he lacked nothing for increasing or perfecting righteousness. Having considered and treated these things according to the strength the Lord deigns to give, we conclude that a man is not justified by the precepts of a good life except through faith in Jesus Christ; that is, not by the law of works but by the law of faith, not by the letter but by the Spirit, not by the merits of deeds but by free grace.

Although, then, the apostle seems to rebuke and correct those who were being persuaded to be circumcised in such a way that he calls this circumcision and the other observances of the law of this kind by the name of the law (observances which Christians now reject as shadows of the future, holding what was figuratively promised through those shadows), yet he wishes the law by which he says no one is justified to be understood not only in those sacraments which had promissory figures, but also in those works which whoever does them lives righteously; among which is also “You shall not covet.” And to make what we say plainer, let us look at the Decalogue itself. Certainly Moses received on the mountain the law to be ministered to the people, written on tablets of stone by the finger of God. It is summed up in ten commandments, in which nothing is commanded about circumcision, nothing about sacrifices of animals, which are not now offered by Christians. In those ten commandments, then, apart from the observance of the Sabbath, let someone tell me what is not to be observed by a Christian, whether concerning not making and worshiping idols or any other gods besides the one true God, or not taking the name of God in vain, or giving honor to parents, or avoiding acts of sexual immorality, murders, thefts, false testimonies, adulteries, coveting what belongs to another. Which of these would anyone say a Christian ought not to keep? Or perhaps the apostle does not call this law, written on those two tablets, the letter that kills, but that law of circumcision and the other old sacraments now abolished? But how shall we think this, when in it is “You shall not covet,” through which commandment, though holy and just and good, “sin deceived me,” he says, “and through it killed me”? For what else is “the letter kills”?

Although it is more evident in that very passage to the Corinthians where he says, “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life,” that he wants no other letter to be understood than the Decalogue itself, written on those two tablets. For he says thus: “For you are a letter of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on fleshly tablets of the heart. Such confidence we have through Christ toward God, not that we are sufficient to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. But if the ministry of death, engraved in letters on stones, was made in glory, so that the children of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, which was passing away, how will the ministry of the Spirit not be rather in glory? For if the ministry of condemnation is glory, much more will the ministry of righteousness abound in glory.” Much could be said about these words, but perhaps more fittingly later. Now, however, notice what letter he says kills, to which, as by contrast, he opposes the life-giving Spirit. It is certainly the ministry of death engraved in letters on stones, and the ministry of condemnation, because the law came in so that the offense might abound. Yet the commands themselves are so useful and wholesome to the one who does them that, unless someone does them, he cannot have life. Or is the Decalogue called the letter that kills because of one command placed there about the Sabbath, since whoever still observes that day as the letter sounds is carnally minded (and to be carnally minded is death), while those nine commands, which are rightly observed as they are written, are to be thought to belong not to the law of works, by which no one is justified, but to the law of faith, by which the righteous man lives? Who would think so absurdly that the ministry of death engraved in letters on stone is not said of all ten commands, but of the one alone that concerns the Sabbath? Where, then, do we put, “The law works wrath; for where there is no law, neither is there transgression,” and, “Until the law, sin was in the world; but sin was not counted when there was no law,” and what we have mentioned so often, “Through the law comes the knowledge of sin,” and above all that saying where he expressed more clearly what is being discussed: “I would not have known concupiscence if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’”?

Consider that whole passage and see whether he says anything because of circumcision or the Sabbath or any other shadowy sacrament, and does not say it all for this reason: that the letter forbidding sin does not give man life but rather kills, by increasing concupiscence and heaping up iniquity by transgression, unless grace sets free through the law of faith which is in Christ Jesus, when charity is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For when he had said, “so that we may serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of the letter,” he says, “What then shall we say? Is the law sin? Far from it. But I did not know sin except through the law. For I would not have known concupiscence if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, taking occasion through the commandment, worked in me all concupiscence; for apart from the law sin was dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived. And I died, and the commandment that was for life was found to be for death to me. For sin, taking occasion through the commandment, deceived me and by it killed me. So the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Did what is good, then, become death for me? Far from it. But sin, so that it might appear as sin, worked death in me through what is good, so that sin might become sinful beyond measure through the commandment. For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I do, I do not understand; for I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate. But if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. But now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good is not. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I do not want, this I do. But if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find, then, a law, when I want to do good, that evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind and making me captive in the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.”

It is evident, then, that the oldness of the letter, if the newness of the Spirit is absent, makes people guilty by the knowledge of sin rather than setting them free from sin. Hence it is also written elsewhere, “He who increases knowledge increases sorrow”; not because the law itself is evil, but because it has a good command in the letter that shows, not in the Spirit that helps. And if that command is done from fear of punishment, not from love of righteousness, it is done servilely, not freely, and therefore it is not done. For that fruit is not good which does not grow from the root of charity. But if faith is present, which works through love, one begins to delight in the law of God according to the inner man; and this delight is the gift, not of the letter, but of the Spirit, even if another law in the members still fights against the law of the mind, until the whole oldness, changed into the newness that grows from day to day in the inner man, passes away, the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord delivering us from the body of this death.

This grace lay hidden, veiled, in the Old Testament, and has been revealed in the gospel of Christ by a most orderly arrangement of times, as God knows how to arrange all things. And perhaps it belongs to that very hiding of it that in the Decalogue given on Mount Sinai only this, which concerns the Sabbath, was hidden in a figurative command. Now the Sabbath is a day of sanctification. Nor is it without meaning that, among all the works God made, sanctification was first sounded there, where he rested from all his works; but this is not the place to discuss that. Yet, as I think is enough for the matter in hand, it was not for nothing that the people were commanded to abstain on that day from all servile work, by which sin is signified, unless because not to sin belongs to sanctification, that is, to the gift of God through the Holy Spirit. This alone, among the rest, was placed in the shadow of a figure in the law written on two tablets of stone, in which the Jews observe the Sabbath, so that by this very fact it might be signified that it was then the time for grace to be hidden, which was to be revealed in the New Testament through Christ's passion, as by the tearing of the veil. “For when you have passed over,” he says, “to Christ, the veil will be taken away.”

“Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” This Spirit of God, by whose gift we are justified, by whom it comes about in us that not sinning delights us, where there is freedom, just as without this Spirit sinning delights us, where there is slavery, from whose works we must abstain, that is, keep the Sabbath spiritually; this Holy Spirit, through whom charity is poured out in our hearts, which is the fullness of the law, is also called in the gospel the finger of God. Hence, since those tablets too were written by the finger of God, and the finger of God is the Spirit of God, by whom we are sanctified so that, living by faith, we may work well through love, who is not moved by this correspondence and at the same time this difference? For fifty days are counted from the celebration of the Passover, which was commanded through Moses to be performed figuratively by the killing of a sheep, certainly as a sign of the Lord's future passion, up to the day on which Moses received the law on tablets written by the finger of God; likewise, from the killing and resurrection of him who was led like a sheep to the slaughter, when fifty days were completed, the finger of God, that is, the Holy Spirit, filled the faithful gathered together in one place.

In this wonderful correspondence there is certainly this great difference, that there the people were forbidden by dreadful terror to approach the place where the law was given, but here the Holy Spirit came upon those who had been gathered together awaiting his promised coming; there the finger of God worked on tablets of stone, here on the hearts of men. There, then, the law was placed outside, by which the unrighteous were to be frightened; here it was given within, by which they were to be justified. For “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not covet, and any other command there is” (which was certainly written on those tablets) “is summed up,” he says, “in this word, in ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love of neighbor does no evil. And charity is the fullness of the law.” This was not written on tablets of stone, but poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. The law of God, then, is charity. To it the wisdom of the flesh is not subject; for it cannot be. But when, to frighten this wisdom of the flesh, the works of charity are written on tablets, it is the law of works and the letter that kills the transgressor; but when charity itself is poured out in the heart of believers, it is the law of faith and the Spirit that gives life to the one who loves.

See now how this distinction agrees with those apostolic words which I mentioned a little earlier for another purpose and put off treating more carefully. “Being made manifest,” he says, “that you are a letter of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on fleshly tablets of the heart.” See how he shows that the one is written outside man, to terrify him from without, the other in man himself, to justify him from within. He called them fleshly tablets of the heart, not of carnal wisdom, but as living and having feeling, in comparison with stone, which is without feeling. And what he says a little later, that the children of Israel could not look intently to the end of Moses' face, and therefore he spoke to them through a veil, signifies this: that the letter of the law justifies no one, but a veil is placed over the reading of the Old Testament until one passes over to Christ and the veil is taken away; that is, until one passes over to grace and understands that justification comes to us from him, by which we may do what he commands. He commands for this reason, that, failing in ourselves, we may flee to him. Therefore, most watchfully, when he had said, “Such confidence we have through Christ toward God,” lest this be attributed to our own strength, he at once made clear what is at issue, saying, “Not that we are sufficient to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

Accordingly, since the law, as he says elsewhere, was laid down because of transgression, that is, this letter written outside man, he therefore calls it both the ministry of death and the ministry of condemnation; but this, that is, the ministry of the New Testament, he calls the ministry of the Spirit and the ministry of righteousness, because through the gift of the Spirit we work righteousness and are set free from the condemnation of transgression. So the one is done away, the other remains, since the frightening tutor will be removed when charity has succeeded fear; “for where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” And that this ministry is not from our merits but from mercy he says thus: “Therefore, having this ministry, as we have obtained mercy, let us not lose heart, but let us cast away the hidden things of shame, not walking in cunning nor adulterating the word of God by deceit.” By this cunning and deceit he wants us to understand hypocrisy, by which the proud wish to seem righteous. Hence in that psalm which the same apostle mentions in witness to this very grace: “Blessed,” it says, “is he to whom the Lord has not imputed sin, and in whose mouth there is no deceit.” This is the confession of the humble saints, who do not boast that they are what they are not. And a little later: “For we do not preach ourselves,” he says, “but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants through Jesus. For God, who said that light should shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts for the illumination of the knowledge of his glory in the face of Christ Jesus.” This is the knowledge of his glory by which we know that he himself is the light by which our darkness is illuminated. And notice how he presses the same point: “But we have this treasure,” he says, “in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from us.” And a little later, when, commending the same grace more fully in the Lord Jesus Christ, he came to that garment of the righteousness of faith, clothed with which we shall not be found naked, and for which we groan, weighed down by mortality, longing to be clothed over with our dwelling that is from heaven, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life, see what he adds: “He who has worked us for this very thing,” he says, “is God, who has given us the pledge of the Spirit.” And after a little he added, “so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” This is that righteousness of God, not by which he himself is righteous, but by which we are made righteous by him.

Let no Christian, then, stray from this faith, which alone is Christian; and let no one, when he is ashamed to say that we become righteous by ourselves, without the grace of God working this in us (because he sees that this cannot be tolerated by the faithful and godly when it is said), turn to saying that we cannot be righteous without the working of God's grace for this reason, that he gave the law, that he established teaching, that he commanded good precepts. For these without the helping Spirit are undoubtedly the letter that kills; but when the life-giving Spirit is present, it makes that very thing, written within, to be loved, which the law, written outside, made to be feared.

Look into this a little also in that most splendid testimony on this matter given through the prophet: “Behold, the days will come, says the Lord, and I will accomplish upon the house of Israel and upon the house of Judah a new covenant, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel: after those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws into their heart, and I will write them in their mind; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And each one shall not teach his fellow citizen and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest of them; for I will be merciful to their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more.” What shall we say to this? In the old books, apart from this prophetic passage, there is either nowhere or hardly anywhere a mention of the new covenant such that it is called by that very name. For in many places it is signified and foretold as future, but not in such a way that the name too is read expressly. Consider carefully, then, what difference God testified there to be between the two covenants, that is, the old and the new.