Living Letters
1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some, letters of recommendation to you or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. q 3 You show that you are Christ’s letter, r delivered by us, not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God s—not on tablets of stone t but on tablets of human hearts. ,u
Paul’s Competence
4 Such is the confidence we have through Christ before God. 5 It is not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God. v 6 He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, w not of the letter, x but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
New Covenant Ministry
7 Now if the ministry that brought death, chiseled in letters on stones, came with glory, y so that the Israelites were not able to gaze steadily at Moses’s face because of its glory, which was set aside, 8 how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? 9 For if the ministry that brought condemnation had glory, the ministry that brings righteousness overflows with even more glory. 10 In fact, what had been glorious is not glorious now by comparison because of the glory that surpasses it. 11 For if what was set aside z was glorious, what endures will be even more glorious.
12 Since, then, we have such a hope, a we act with great boldness. 13 We are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face b to prevent the Israelites from gazing steadily until the end of the glory of what was being set aside, 14 but their minds were hardened. c For to this day, at the reading of the old covenant, d the same veil remains; it is not lifted, because it is set aside only in Christ. e 15 Yet still today, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts, 16 but whenever a person turns f to the Lord, the veil is removed. g 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at ,h the glory of the Lord i and are being transformed j into the same image k from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.
3:1–6a. His words, however, in the context of the competition for ecclesiastical leadership that had been going on at Corinth (1 Co 1:12; 2 Co 10:1–13:13), needed careful clarification on two counts. First, there was the possibility that they might be read by some as a purely subjective self-commendation, and, second, there was the likelihood that they might prompt an immediate comparison between Paul and others who carried formal letters of recommendation (3:1).
3:6b–11. The comparison does not proceed by way of deprecation, describing the latter ministry as glorious and the former as inglorious. Rather, Paul makes a comparison between the recognized and authentic “glory” of the former covenant (3:7, 9a, 11a) and the surpassing glory of the latter (3:8, 9b, 10, 11b). The argument is strengthened by allusion to the account of the gift of the law (Ex 34:29–35). Paul provides an interpretative commentary on the meaning of this passage, inferring from the Septuagint (the Gk translation of the OT) that the glory radiating from Moses’s face when he brought the gift of the law down from the mount was a fading rather than a permanent possession, one perpetuated only by Moses’s frequent reentrance into God’s presence. The glory of Moses’s ministry in bringing to Israel the covenant of the law was therefore real but transitory (3:7). The glory of Christian ministry in proclaiming the new covenant is greater, for it endures (3:11).
3:12–18. This perspective on the value of Christian ministry then motivates Paul to bold proclamation (3:12). He has put no veil on his message in an attempt to shield the surpassing glory of the gospel from his fellow Jews, as had Moses, who had hidden the glow of God’s glory behind a veil (3:13; cf. Ex 34:33–35). Instead, it was quite the reverse. If Paul’s message was veiled, that was only because the law and its traditional interpretation (given when the old covenant is read) had veiled and dulled Jewish minds to the truth of the gospel (3:14–15). But, as experience has shown, whenever they turn to the Lord, that veil is removed (according to Paul’s interpretation of Ex 34:34) under the inspiration of the Spirit (3:16). For the Spirit brings freedom from the systematic adherence of Judaism to the law and its traditional interpretation; the Spirit actually enables the transformation of existence that was the intention behind the letter of the law (3:17–18).