Ministers of the New Covenant

3 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we?^{(A) 2} You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all, ³ and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are human hearts.^[a](B)

⁴ Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. ⁵ Not that we are qualified of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our qualification is from God,^{(C) 6} who has made us qualified to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.^(D)

¹² Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with complete frankness,^{(A) 13} not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that^[a] was being set aside.^{(B) 14} But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, the same veil is still there; it is not unveiled since in Christ it is set aside.^{(C) 15} Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds,^{[b] 16} but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.^{(D) 17} Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.^{(E) 18} And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.^(F)