We are confident of all this because of our great trust in God through Christ. It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God. He has enabled us to be ministers of his new covenant. This is a covenant not of written laws, but of the Spirit. The old written covenant ends in death; but under the new covenant, the Spirit gives life. (2 Corinthians 3:4-6)

What can we accomplish for God on our own? Nothing.

If every church group, every church committee member, every deacon, every Sunday School teacher, every Bible study leader, every worship leader, every regular church member, every soup kitchen volunteer, every missionary, every pastor, every Christian knew this, there would be massive changes in Christianity in the world. Then we wouldn’t be in charge; God would be. We would all be operating under one basic principle: Everything comes from God and nothing comes from us. That is both humbling and powerful — humbling, because I can’t produce it, powerful, because God does.

The new covenant is not some incantation we say over all our efforts on God’s behalf; it is way of life that we live under. We follow the lead of the Lord, and everything we do we do through the power of the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit isn’t in it, it doesn’t matter how good it is, it will amount to nothing.

What can we accomplish for God on our own? Nothing.

And notice how this gives us confidence. There is no confidence in our efforts on God’s behalf because we have no way of knowing if we have done enough. (We never have.) And so we live in doubt and frustration. Remember we said yesterday that the new covenant always starts with failure? It is in that failure that we finally find the Holy Spirit and discover that He is always enough. The old covenant (the law requiring our own strength) ends in death, but the new covenant (always relying on the Spirit) gives life.

One produces life, excitement, joy, surprise, adventure. The other produces …nothing.