so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.

I had no rest for my spirit, not finding Titus my brother; but saying goodbye to them, I went on to Macedonia.

For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing:

For we are not like the many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.

Ministers of a New Covenant

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you?

revealing yourselves, that you are a letter of Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

Such is the confidence we have toward God through Christ.

Not that we are adequate in ourselves so as to consider anything as having come from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God,

who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

But if the ministry of death, engraved in letters on stones, came with glory so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was,

how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory?

For indeed what had glory in this case has no glory, because of the glory that surpasses it.

Therefore, having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech,

and we are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not stare at the end of what was fading away.

But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ.

but whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

But we all, with unveiled faces, looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

Paul’s Apostolic Ministry

Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart,

but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in trickery nor distorting the word of God, but by the open proclamation of the truth commending ourselves to every person’s conscience in the sight of God.

in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they will not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants on account of Jesus.

For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

But we have this treasure in earthen containers, so that the extraordinary greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves;

persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed;