Pursuing that one day my scheduled readings brought me to the juxtaposition of John 5 and 2 Corinthians 3. It was a pleasant comparison, and both of the passages I found said the same thing in a different way.

In John 5:39 ff, it was, "You search the Scriptures... but you won't come to Me... you don't have the Love of God in you."

I was always taught to read that verse as a command, "Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life...". It was used in Sunday School to get folks to read the Bible. But the grammar, to this English student, didn't work. In Greek it's permissible to make that particular verb an imperative, "Search..." But it's equally allowable for it to be a 2nd person statement, as quoted above, "You search..." In English, it is a perfect sentence that latter way, albeit a very negative one.

The idea being, You Pharisees! All these years you've been reading your Bibles, but when the Author of your readings stands in front of you, you don't recognize Him. God is not working in you, or you would have figured out what the Bible means. You could have come to me, been filled with me, and I would have given you grace to obey every word of it.

In 2 Corinthians 3:2, Paul in a similar vein tells his readers, You are the epistle of Paul to the world. You are a letter written in the hearts of men. You are a living enactment of the truth of God. The letter of the law, though holy and true, kills those who cannot/will not comprehend it. And, without the Spirit of God that has given you life, it is impossible to comprehend it! You have gone beyond the pages of the Law, even the pages of my lists of commands, and gone into into the power. You're past the record of truth and have hit upon the reality of that truth, the man Jesus Christ!