1Are we beginning to praise ourselves again? Or do we need letters of recommendation to you, or from you, as some people do?
2You yourselves are our letter, written in our hearts. Everyone knows it and reads it.
3It is clear that you are a letter from Christ, delivered by us. It was not written with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. It was not written on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.
4We have this confidence toward God through Christ.
5We are not able, by ourselves, to claim anything as coming from us. Our ability comes from God.
6He has made us able servants of the new covenant. It is not a covenant of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
7The ministry that brought death was carved in letters on stones, and it came with glory. The people of Israel could not keep looking at the face of Moses, because of the glory on his face, though that glory was fading.
8If that was so, will the ministry of the Spirit not have far more glory?
9For if the ministry that condemns had glory, the ministry that brings righteousness has much more glory.
10In fact, what was glorious has no glory at all now, compared with the glory that is so much greater.
11For if what was fading away came with glory, what lasts has much more glory.
12So, since we have such a hope, we speak very plainly.
13We are not like Moses, who put a veil over his face, so that the people of Israel could not keep looking at the end of what was fading away.
14But their minds were made blind. To this day the same veil stays there when the old covenant is read. It is not lifted, because only in Christ is it taken away.
15Even today, when Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart.
16But when it turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
17Now the Lord is that Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
18And we all, with uncovered faces, see the glory of the Lord as in a mirror. We are being changed into that same image, from glory to glory, by the Spirit of the Lord.