Open Bible Data Home About News OET Key
OET OET-RV OET-LV ULT UST BSB BLB AICNT OEB WEBBE WMBB NET LSV FBV TCNT T4T LEB BBE Moff JPS Wymth ASV DRA YLT Drby RV Wbstr KJB-1769 KJB-1611 Bshps Gnva Cvdl TNT Wycl SR-GNT UHB BrLXX BrTr Related Topics Parallel Interlinear Reference Dictionary Search
OEB By Document By Section By Chapter Details
2COR C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 C10 C11 C12 C13
Titleless Section Break
3 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or are we like some who need letters of commendation to you, or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter – a letter written on our hearts, and one which everybody can read and understand. 3 All can see that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, a letter written, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.
The Ministry of the Apostles
4 This, then, is the confidence in regard to God that we have gained through the Christ. 5 I do not mean that we are fit to form any judgment by ourselves, as if on our own authority; 6 our fitness comes from God, who himself made us fit to be assistants of a new covenant, of which the substance is, not a written Law, but a Spirit. For the written Law means death, but the Spirit gives life.
7 If the system of religion which involved death, embodied in a written Law and engraved on stones, began amid such glory, that the Israelites were unable to gaze at the face of Moses because of its glory, though it was but a passing glory, 8 will not the religion that confers the Spirit have still greater glory? 9 For, if there was a glory in the religion that involved condemnation, far greater is the glory of the religion that confers righteousness! 10 Indeed, that which then had glory has lost its glory, because of the glory which surpasses it. 11 And, if that which was to pass away was attended with glory, far more will that which is to endure be surrounded with glory!
12 With such a hope as this, we speak with all plainness; 13 unlike Moses, who covered his face with a veil, to prevent the Israelites from gazing at the disappearance of what was passing away. 14 But their minds were slow to learn. Indeed, to this very day, at the public reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains; only for those who are in union with Christ does it pass away. 15 But, even to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies on their hearts. 16 Yet, whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17 And the Lord is the Spirit, and, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And all of us, with faces from which the veil is lifted, seeing, as if reflected in a mirror, the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into his likeness, from glory to glory, as it is given by the Lord, the Spirit.