1. Do we begin again to commend ourselves? Or do we need, like some others, letters of recommendation to you, or letters of recommendation from you?
2. You are our letter written in our hearts, known and read by all men:
3. In that you are plainly declared to be the letter of Christ presented by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.
4. And such trust have we through Christ towards God:
5. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to think anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God;
6. Who also has made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.
7. But if the ministry of death, written and engraved in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance; which glory was to come to an end:
8. How shall not the ministry of the spirit be more glorious?
9. For if the ministry of condemnation is glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness exceed it in glory.
10. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, because of the glory that surpasses it.
11. For if that which has come to an end was glorious, much more is that which remains glorious.
12. Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech:
13. And not like Moses, who put a veil over his face, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly see the end of that which is now abolished:
14. But their minds were blinded: for to this day the same veil is still not removed in the reading of the old testament; which veil comes to an end in Christ.
15. But even to this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart.
16. Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.
17. Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
18. But we all, with unveiled faces beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
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