2 Corinthians 3

¹Are we starting to recommend ourselves again? Or do we, like some people, need letters of introduction to you, or perhaps from you? ²You yourselves are our letter, inscribed on our hearts, known and read by everyone. ³You make it obvious that you are a letter from Christ, delivered through our service, inscribed not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God—not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.

⁴We have this kind of confidence toward God through Christ. ⁵Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; rather, our competence comes from God. ⁶He is the one who made us competent as servants of a new covenant—not of a written code, but of the Spirit. For the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life.

⁷Now if the service that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stones, arrived with such radiance that the people of Israel could not gaze at the face of Moses because of its radiance (even though that radiance was already being deactivated), ⁸how much more will the service of the Spirit be characterized by radiance? ⁹For if the service of condemnation had its radiance, the service of justice overflows with radiance all the more! ¹⁰In fact, what was once radiant has lost its radiance in this respect, because of the radiance that completely surpasses it. ¹¹For if what was being deactivated came through radiance, how much more does that which remains exist in radiance!

¹²Since we have such a hope, we speak with great plainness. ¹³We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the people of Israel would not gaze at the final end of what was being deactivated. ¹⁴But their minds were calloused. To this very day, that same veil remains whenever the old covenant is read. It is not lifted, because only in Christ is it deactivated. ¹⁵Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts. ¹⁶But whenever one turns to the Lord, the veil is stripped away. ¹⁷Now the "Lord" is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ¹⁸And we all, with unveiled faces, contemplating the Lord’s radiance as in a mirror, are being transformed into that same image, from one degree of radiance to another, just as from the Lord, who is the Spirit.