³¹ “^(A)Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a ^(B)new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, ³² not like the ^(C)covenant which I made with their fathers on the day I ^(D)took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My ^(E)covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. ³³ “For ^(F)this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord: “^(G)I will put My law within them and write it on their heart; and ^(H)I will be their God, and they shall be My people. ³⁴ They will ^(I)not teach again, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all ^(J)know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will ^(K)forgive their wrongdoing, and their ^(L)sin I will no longer remember.”

Ministers of a New Covenant

3 Are we beginning to ^(A)commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, ^(B)letters of commendation to you or from you? ^2 (C)You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all people, ³ revealing yourselves, that you are a letter of Christ, ^[a](D)delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of ^(E)the living God, not on ^(F)tablets of stone but on ^(G)tablets of ^[b](H)human hearts.

⁴ Such is the ^(I)confidence we have toward God through Christ. ⁵ Not that we are adequate in ourselves so as to consider anything as having come from ourselves, but ^(J)our adequacy is from God, ⁶ who also made us adequate as ^(K)servants of a ^(L)new covenant, not of ^(M)the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but ^(N)the Spirit gives life.