1. Do we begin again to commend ourselves? Or do we need, as some others, letters of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?
2. You are our letter written in our hearts, known and read by all men.
3. For you are prominently declared to be the letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on human tablets of the heart.
4. We have such trust through Christ toward God,
5. not that we are sufficient in ourselves to take credit for anything of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God,
6. who has made us able ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
7. If the ministry that brought death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, the glory which was to fade away,
8. how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?
9. For if the ministry of condemnation is glorious, the ministry of righteousness much more exceeds it in glory.
10. Even that which was made glorious had no glory in comparison to the glory that excels.
11. For if that which fades was glorious, that which remains is much more glorious.
12. Seeing then that we have such hope, we speak with great boldness,
13. not as Moses, who put a veil over his face, so that the children of Israel could not look intently at the end of what was fading away.
14. Instead, their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the old covenant, the veil which was done away with in Christ.
15. But even to this day, when Moses is read, the veil is in their hearts.
16. Nevertheless when anyone 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 liberty.
18. But we all, seeing the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces, as in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord.