1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you?
2 You are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone.
3 It is clear that you are a letter from Messiah delivered by us—written not with ink but with the Ruach of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
4 Such is the confidence we have through Messiah toward God—
5 not that we are competent in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our competence is from God.
6 He also made us competent as servants of a new covenant—not of the letter, but of the Ruach. For the letter kills, but the Ruach gives life.
7 Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that Bnei-Yisrael could not look intently upon Moses’ face because of its glory—although it was passing away—
8 how will the ministry of the Ruach not be even more glorious?
9 For if there is glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness overflows even more in glory.
10 For even what was glorious is not glorious in comparison to the glory that surpasses it.
11 For if what is passing away is glorious, much more what remains is glorious.
12 Therefore, having such a hope, we act with great boldness.
13 We are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face in order for Bnei-Yisrael not to look intently upon the end of what was passing away.
14 But their minds were hardened. For up to this very day the same veil remains unlifted at the reading of the ancient covenant, since in Messiah it is passing away.
15 But to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart.
16 But whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Ruach Adonai is, there is freedom.
18 But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory—just as from the Lord, who is the Spirit.