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¹ Are we starting to recommend ourselves again? Or do we, like some, need letters of recommendation either to you or from you? ² You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. ³ You make it clear that you are a letter from the Messiah placed in our care, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets but on human hearts.

⁴ Such is the confidence we have through the Messiah toward God. ⁵ It is not that we are competent in ourselves to count anything as having come from us; on the contrary, our competence is from God. ⁶ He has even made us competent to be workers serving a New Covenant, the essence of which is not a written text but the Spirit. For the written text brings death, but the Spirit gives life.

⁷ Now if that which worked death, by means of a written text engraved on stone tablets, came with glory — such glory that the people of Isra'el could not stand to look at Moshe's face because of its brightness, even though that brightness was already fading away — ⁸ won't the working of the Spirit be accompanied by even greater glory? ⁹ For if there was glory in what worked to declare people guilty, how much more must the glory abound in what works to declare people innocent! ¹⁰ In fact, by comparison with this greater glory, what was made glorious before has no glory now. ¹¹ For if there was glory in what faded away, how much more glory must there be in what lasts.

¹² Therefore, with a hope like this, we are very open — ¹³ unlike Moshe, who put a veil over his face, so that the people of Isra'el would not see the fading brightness come to an end.

¹⁴ What is more, their minds were made stonelike; for to this day the same veil remains over them when they read the Old Covenant; it has not been unveiled, because only by the Messiah is the veil taken away. ¹⁵ Yes, till today, whenever Moshe is read, a veil lies over their heart. ¹⁶ "But," says the Torah, "whenever someone turns to Adonai, the veil is taken away."^{[a] 17} Now, "Adonai" in this text means the Spirit. And where the Spirit of Adonai is, there is freedom. ¹⁸ So all of us, with faces unveiled, see as in a mirror the glory of the Lord; and we are being changed into his very image, from one degree of glory to the next, by Adonai the Spirit.