| 3:1 | Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? We don’t need letters of recommendation to you or from you as some other people do, do we?* |
| 3:2 | You yourselves are our letter,* written on our hearts, known and read by everyone, |
| 3:3 | revealing* that you are a letter of Christ, delivered by us,* written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets* but on tablets of human hearts. |
| 3:4 | Now we have such confidence in God through Christ. |
| 3:5 | Not that we are adequate* in ourselves to consider anything as if it were coming from ourselves, but our adequacy* is from God, |
| 3:6 | who made us adequate* to be servants of a new covenant* not based on the letter but on the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. |
| 3:7 | But if the ministry that produced death – carved in letters on stone tablets* – came with glory, so that the Israelites* could not keep their eyes fixed on the face of Moses because of the glory of his face* (a glory* which was made ineffective),* |
| 3:8 | how much more glorious will the ministry of the Spirit be?* |
| 3:9 | For if there was glory in the ministry that produced condemnation,* how much more does the ministry that produces righteousness* excel* in glory! |
| 3:10 | For indeed, what had been glorious now* has no glory because of the tremendously greater glory of what replaced it.* |
| 3:11 | For if what was made ineffective* came with* glory, how much more has what remains* come in glory! |
| 3:12 | Therefore, since we have such a hope, we behave with great boldness,* |
| 3:13 | and not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites* from staring* at the result* of the glory that was made ineffective.* |
| 3:14 | But their minds were closed.* For to this very day, the same veil remains when they hear the old covenant read.* It has not been removed because only in Christ is it taken away.* |
| 3:15 | But until this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds,* |
| 3:16 | but when one* turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.* |
| 3:17 | Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is present,* there is freedom. |
| 3:18 | And we all, with unveiled faces reflecting the glory of the Lord,* are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another,* which is from* the Lord, who is the Spirit.* |
2 Corinthians 3 - NET Bible [draft]
