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? 1 3:2 You yourselves are our letter, 2 written on our hearts, known and read by everyone, 3:3 revealing 3 that you are a letter of Christ, delivered by us, 4 written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets 5 but on tablets of human hearts.
3:4 Now we have such confidence in God through Christ. 3:5 Not that we are adequate 6 in ourselves to consider anything as if it were coming from ourselves, but our adequacy 7 is from God, 3:6 who made us adequate 8 to be servants of a new covenant 9 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 10 – came with glory, so that the Israelites 11 could not keep their eyes fixed on the face of Moses because of the glory of his face 12 (a glory 13 which was made ineffective), 14 3:8 how much more glorious will the ministry of the Spirit be? 15 3:9 For if there was glory in the ministry that produced condemnation, 16 how much more does the ministry that produces righteousness 17 excel 18 in glory! 3:10 For indeed, what had been glorious now 19 has no glory because of the tremendously greater glory of what replaced it. 20 3:11 For if what was made ineffective 21 came with 22 glory, how much more has what remains 23 come in glory! 3:12 Therefore, since we have such a hope, we behave with great boldness, 24 3:13 and not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites 25 from staring 26 at the result 27 of the glory that was made ineffective. 28 3:14 But their minds were closed. 29 For to this very day, the same veil remains when they hear the old covenant read. 30 It has not been removed because only in Christ is it taken away. 31 3:15 But until this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds, 32