¹Are we beginning to praise ourselves again? Do we need a letter of recommendation, either to you or from you?

²You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, where everyone can see it and read it.

³It’s clear that you’re a letter from Christ, the result of our work for God, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God. You’re a letter not written on tablets of stone but on human hearts.

⁴Through Christ, we can be sure of this before God.

⁵By ourselves, we aren’t able to claim anything for ourselves. The power to do what we do comes from God.

⁶He has given us the power to serve under a new covenant. It’s not based on the written Law of Moses; it comes from the Holy Spirit. The written Law kills, but the Spirit gives life.

⁷The Law was written in letters on stone. Though it was a way of serving God, it led to death. But that way of serving God was surrounded by glory when it was introduced. The glory lasted for only a short time, but even so, the people of Israel couldn’t look at Moses’ face for very long because of it.

⁸Wouldn’t the work of the Holy Spirit be even more glorious?

⁹If the law that condemns people to death had glory, how much more glorious will the work of the Spirit be! It makes people right with God.

¹⁰The glory of the old covenant is nothing compared with the far greater glory of the new covenant.

¹¹The glory of the old covenant lasted for only a short time. How much greater is the glory of the new covenant that lasts forever!

¹²Since we have that kind of hope, we are very bold.

¹³We aren’t like Moses, who used to cover his face with a veil to keep the people of Israel from seeing the last bit of glory fade away.

¹⁴But they still don’t understand; to this day, the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. The veil has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away.

¹⁵Even to this day, when the Law of Moses is read, a veil covers the minds of those who hear it.

¹⁶But when anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

¹⁷Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

¹⁸None of our faces are covered with a veil. All of us can see and contemplate the Lord’s glory. So we’re being changed to become more and more glorious like him. All this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.