New Testament

2 Corinthians — Chapter 3

  1. Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you?
  2. You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all.
  3. And you show that you are a letter from Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
  4. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.
  5. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our competence comes from God,
  6. who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
  7. Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, a glory that was being set aside,
  8. will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory?
  9. For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory.
  10. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it.
  11. For if what was being set aside came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.
  12. Since we have such a hope, we act with great boldness,
  13. not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside.
  14. But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside.
  15. Yes, to 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, there is freedom.
  18. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.