The Second to the Corinthians, 3

¹ Are we starting again to recommend ourselves? Or do we, perhaps, like some men, need letters of recommendation to YOU or from YOU?

² YOU yourselves are our letter, inscribed on our^*1 hearts and known and being read by all mankind.

³ For YOU are shown to be a letter of Christ written by us as ministers, inscribed not with ink but with spirit of a living God, not on stone tablets, but on fleshly tablets, on hearts.^*1

⁴ Now through the Christ we have this sort of confidence toward God.

⁵ Not that we of ourselves are adequately qualified to reckon anything as issuing from ourselves, but our being adequately qualified^*1 issues from God,

⁶ who has indeed adequately qualified us to be ministers^*1 of a new covenant, not of a written code,^*2 but of spirit; for the written code condemns to death, but the spirit makes alive.

⁷ Moreover, if the code which administers death and which was engraved^*1 in letters in stones came about in a glory, so that the sons of Israel could not gaze intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, [a glory] that was to be done away with,

⁸ why should not the administering of the spirit be much more with glory?

⁹ For if the code administering condemnation^*1 was glorious,^*2 much more does the administering of righteousness abound with glory.

¹⁰ In fact, even that which has once been made glorious has been stripped of glory in this respect, because of the glory that excels it.

¹¹ For if that which was to be done away with was brought in with glory, much more would that which remains be with glory.

¹² Therefore, as we have such a hope, we are using great freeness of speech,

¹³ and not doing as when Moses would put a veil upon his face, that the sons of Israel might not gaze intently at the end of that which was to be done away with.

¹⁴ But their mental powers were dulled. For to this present day the same veil remains unlifted at the reading of the old covenant,^*1 because it is done away with by means of Christ.

¹⁵ In fact, down till today whenever Moses is read, a veil lies upon their hearts.

¹⁶ But when there is a turning to Jehovah,^*1 the veil is taken away.

¹⁷ Now Jehovah^*1 is the Spirit; and where the spirit of Jehovah^*2 is, there is freedom.

¹⁸ And all of us, while we with unveiled faces reflect like mirrors the glory of Jehovah,^*1 are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, exactly as done by Jehovah^*2 [the] Spirit.^*3