Chapter 3

¹Am I falling into self-recommendation again? Do I, like some people, need letters of recommendation to you or from you? ²You are my recommendations, written on my heart, for everybody to read and understand. ³You show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by me, written not in ink, but in the Spirit of the living God, and not on tablets of stone, but on the human heart.

⁴Such is the confidence that I have through Christ in my relations to God. ⁵Not that I am of myself qualified to claim anything as originating with me. My qualification is from God, ⁶and he has qualified me to serve him in the interests of a new agreement, not in writing but of spirit. For what is written kills, but the Spirit gives life.

⁷But if the religion of death, carved in letters of stone, was ushered in with such splendor, so that the Israelites could not look at Moses’ face on account of the brightness that was fading from it, ⁸why should not the religion of the Spirit be attended with much greater splendor? ⁹If there was splendor in the religion of condemnation, the religion of uprightness must far surpass it in splendor. ¹⁰For in comparison with its surpassing splendor, what was splendid has come to have no splendor at all. ¹¹For if what faded away came with splendor, how much more splendid what is permanent must be!

¹²So since I have such a hope, I speak with great frankness, ¹³not like Moses, who used to wear a veil over his face, to keep the Israelites from gazing at the fading of the splendor from it. ¹⁴Their minds were dulled. For to this day, that same veil remains unlifted, when they read the old agreement, for only through union with Christ is it removed. ¹⁵Why, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil hangs over their minds, ¹⁶but “whenever a man turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.” ¹⁷Now the Lord here means the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ¹⁸And all of us, reflecting the splendor of the Lord in our unveiled faces, are being changed into likeness to him, from one degree of splendor to another, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.