Living Letters

3 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some, letters of recommendation to you or from you? ² You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone.^{(A) 3} You show that you are Christ’s letter,^(B) delivered^[a] by us, not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God^(C)—not on tablets of stone^(D) but on tablets of human hearts.^[b](E)

Paul’s Competence

⁴ Such is the confidence we have through Christ before God. ⁵ It is not that we are competent in^[c] ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.^{(F) 6} He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant,^(G) not of the letter,^(H) but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

New Covenant Ministry

⁷ Now if the ministry that brought death, chiseled in letters on stones, came with glory,^(I) so that the Israelites were not able to gaze steadily at Moses’s face because of its glory, which was set aside, ⁸ how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? ⁹ For if the ministry that brought condemnation had glory, the ministry that brings righteousness overflows with even more glory. ¹⁰ In fact, what had been glorious is not glorious now by comparison because of the glory that surpasses it. ¹¹ For if what was set aside^(J) was glorious, what endures will be even more glorious.

¹² Since, then, we have such a hope,^(K) we act with great boldness. ¹³ We are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face^(L) to prevent the Israelites from gazing steadily until the end^[d] of the glory of what was being set aside, ¹⁴ but their minds were hardened.^(M) For to this day, at the reading of the old covenant,^(N) the same veil remains; it is not lifted, because it is set aside only in Christ.^{(O) 15} Yet still today, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts, ¹⁶ but whenever a person turns^(P) to the Lord, the veil is removed.^{(Q) 17} Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ¹⁸ We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at^[e](R) the glory of the Lord^(S) and are being transformed^(T) into the same image^(U) from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.^[f]