2 Corinthians 3 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Ministers of a New Covenant

3 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you? ² You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all people, ³ revealing yourselves, that you are a letter of Christ, ^[a]delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of ^[b]human hearts.

⁴ Such is the confidence we have toward God through Christ. ⁵ Not that we are adequate in ourselves so as to consider anything as having come from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, ⁶ who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

⁷ But if the ministry of death, engraved in letters on stones, came ^[c]with glory so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was, ⁸ how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory? ⁹ For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness excel in glory. ¹⁰ For indeed what had glory in this case has no glory, because of the glory that surpasses it. ¹¹ For if that which fades away was ^[d]with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.

¹² Therefore, having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech, ¹³ and we are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not stare at the end of what was fading away. ¹⁴ But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil ^[e]remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. ¹⁵ But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts; ¹⁶ but whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. ¹⁷ Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ¹⁸ But we all, with unveiled faces, looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.