2 Corinthians 3

¹Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some [people], letters of recommendation to you or from you?

²You yourselves are our letter, inscribed on our hearts, known and read by everyone.

³It is clear that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with [the] Spirit of [the] living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

⁴Such confidence before God is ours through Christ.

⁵Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim that anything [comes] from us, but our competence [comes] from God.

⁶And He has qualified us [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, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with {such} glory that the Israelites could not gaze at the face of Moses because of [its] fleeting glory,

⁸will not the ministry of the Spirit {be} even more glorious?

⁹For if the ministry of condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious {is} the ministry of righteousness!

¹⁰Indeed, what was once glorious has no glory now in comparison to the glory [that] surpasses [it].

¹¹For if what was fading away [came] with glory, how much greater [is the] glory of that which endures!

¹²Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold.

¹³[We are] not like Moses, [who] would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites [from] gazing at the end of what was fading away.

¹⁴But their minds were closed. For to [this] day the same veil remains at the reading of the old covenant. It has not been lifted, [because] only in Christ can it be removed.

¹⁵And even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts.

¹⁶But whenever [anyone] 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, [who] with unveiled faces all reflect the glory of [the] Lord, are being transformed into [His] image with intensifying glory, which comes from [the] Lord, [who is the] Spirit.