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A Living Letter

¹ Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? We don't need letters of recommendation to you or from you as some other people do, do we? ² You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone, ³ revealing that you are a letter of Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets but on tablets of human hearts.

⁴ Now we have such confidence in God through Christ. ⁵ Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as if it were coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, ⁶ who made us adequate to be servants of a new covenant not based on the letter but on the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

The Greater Glory of the Spirit's Ministry

⁷ But if the ministry that produced death—carved in letters on stone tablets—came with glory, so that the Israelites could not keep their eyes fixed on the face of Moses because of the glory of his face (a glory which was made ineffective), ⁸ how much more glorious will the ministry of the Spirit be? ⁹ For if there was glory in the ministry that produced condemnation, how much more does the ministry that produces righteousness excel in glory! ¹⁰ For indeed, what had been glorious now has no glory because of the tremendously greater glory of what replaced it. ¹¹ For if what was made ineffective came with glory, how much more has what remains come in glory! ¹² Therefore, since we have such a hope, we behave with great boldness, ¹³ and not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from staring at the result of the glory that was made ineffective. ¹⁴ But their minds were closed. For to this very day, the same veil remains when they hear the old covenant read. It has not been removed because only in Christ is it taken away. ¹⁵ But until this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds, ¹⁶ but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. ¹⁷ Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is present, there is freedom. ¹⁸ And we all, with unveiled faces reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, which is from the Lord, who is the Spirit.