Are we beginning again to recommend ourselves? Or do we need, like some people do, letters of recommendation to you or from you?
You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by everyone.
It is clear that you are a letter from Christ, produced by our service, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets that are hearts of flesh.
Moreover, this is the confidence we have in God through Christ.
Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God,
who also has made us sufficient. We are servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit. For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.
But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel were not able to look steadfastly at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, which was passing away,
how will not the ministry of the spirit have even more glory?
For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, the ministry of righteousness much more surely excels in glory!
For indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it.
For if what was set aside had passing glory, much more that which remains has permanent glory!
Therefore, having such a hope, we use great boldness of speech,
and are not like Moses, who put a veil on his face so that the sons of Israel could not look steadfastly on the end of that which was passing away.
But their minds were hardened. For until this very day at the reading of the Old Covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because only in Christ is it taken away.
Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart.
But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom!
And we all, with unveiled faces reflecting as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same appearance, from glory into glory, just as one would expect—from the Lord who is the Spirit.