¹Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? Or do we need, like some, letters of recommendation to y’all or from y’all?

²Y’all are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all humans,

³revealing that y’all are a letter from Christ, ministered to 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.

New Covenant Ministry

⁴We have such confidence through Christ before God,

⁵not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our competence is from God.

⁶Hᴇ also made us competent as deacons of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

⁷But if the deacon-work of death, engraved in letters on stone tablets, came with such glory that the children of Israel could not gaze steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, which was fading away,

⁸won’t the deacon-work of the Spirit be even more glorious?

⁹For if the deacon-work that brought condemnation had glory, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness!

¹⁰For what had been glorious now has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it.

¹¹For if what was fading away had glory, how much more glorious is that which endures!

¹²Therefore, since we have this kind of hope, we act with great boldness,

¹³not like Moses, who would put a veil on his face to prevent the children of Israel from gazing steadily at the end of what was fading away.

¹⁴But their minds were hardened, for to this day, when the old covenant is read, the same veil remains. It has not been drawn back, because only in Christ does it fade away.

¹⁵Yet to this day, when Moses is read, a veil covers their heart,

¹⁶but whenever someone 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.

¹⁸And we all, with unveiled faces are reflecting the glory of the Lord, being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, according to the Lord, who is the Spirit.