Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you?
It is clear that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim that anything comes from us, but our competence comes from God.
And He has qualified us as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Now if the ministry of death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at the face of Moses because of its fleeting glory,
For if the ministry of condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry of righteousness!
We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at the end of what was fading away.
But their minds were closed. For to this day the same veil remains at the reading of the old covenant. It has not been lifted, because only in Christ can it be removed.