1Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? Or do we, like some, need letters of recommendation to you or from you?
2You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all people,
3revealing 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 that are hearts of flesh.
4Such is the confidence we have through Christ toward God.
5Not that we are competent of ourselves to reckon anything as coming from ourselves, but our competence is from God,
6who also made us competent as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
7Now if the ministry of death, engraved in letters on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not gaze at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face—a glory being brought to nothing—
8how will the ministry of the Spirit not be with even greater glory?
9For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, how much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory.
10For indeed what had been glorified has in this respect not been glorified, because of the glory that surpasses it.
11For if what was being brought to nothing came through glory, how much more is what remains in glory.
12Having therefore such a hope, we act with great boldness,
13and not as Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not gaze at the end of what was being brought to nothing.
14But their minds were hardened. For to this very day the same veil remains at the reading of the old covenant, not lifted, because in Christ it is brought to nothing;
15but to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies upon their heart;
16but whenever one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.
17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
18And we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
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