1Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of commendation to you or from you?
2You are our letter, written in our kardia(heart, soul-domain)s, known and read by all men;
3being manifested that you are a letter of Messiah(Christ), served by us, written not with ink but with the pneuma(spirit) of the living God, not on stone tablets but on tablets of kardia(heart, soul-domain)s of sarx(flesh).
4Such confidence we have through Messiah(Christ) toward God.
5Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God,
6who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the pneuma(spirit); for the letter kills, but the pneuma(spirit) gives zoe(life).
7But if the ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones, came 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,
8how will the ministry of the pneuma(spirit) fail to be even more with glory?
9For if the ministry of katakrisis(condemnation) has glory, much more does the ministry of dikaiosyne(righteousness) abound in glory.
10For indeed what had glory, in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it.
11For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.
12Therefore having such a elpis(hope), we use great parrhesia(parresia(boldness), openness) in our speech,
13and are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away.
14But their noemata(minds) were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Messiah(Christ).
15But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their kardia(heart, soul-domain).
16But whenever one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
17Now the Lord is the pneuma(spirit), and where the pneuma(spirit) of the Lord is, there is freedom.
18But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the pneuma(spirit).