Thematic Bible
2 Corinthians 3:1 (show verse)
Am I falling into self-recommendation again? Do I, like some people, need letters of recommendation to you or from you?
2 Corinthians 3:2 (show verse)
You are my recommendations, written on my heart, for everybody to read and understand.
2 Corinthians 3:3 (show verse)
You show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by me, written not in ink, but in the Spirit of the living God, and not on tablets of stone, but on the human heart.
2 Corinthians 3:4 (show verse)
Such is the confidence that I have through Christ in my relations to God.
2 Corinthians 3:5 (show verse)
Not that I am of myself qualified to claim anything as originating with me. My qualification is from God,
2 Corinthians 3:6 (show verse)
and he has qualified me to serve him in the interests of a new agreement, not in writing but of spirit. For what is written kills, but the Spirit gives life.
2 Corinthians 3:7 (show verse)
But if the religion of death, carved in letters of stone, was ushered in with such splendor, so that the Israelites could not look at Moses' face on account of the brightness that was fading from it,
2 Corinthians 3:8 (show verse)
why should not the religion of the Spirit be attended with much greater splendor?
2 Corinthians 3:9 (show verse)
If there was splendor in the religion of condemnation, the religion of uprightness must far surpass it in splendor.
2 Corinthians 3:10 (show verse)
For in comparison with its surpassing splendor, what was splendid has come to have no splendor at all.
2 Corinthians 3:11 (show verse)
For if what faded away came with splendor, how much more splendid what is permanent must be!
2 Corinthians 3:12 (show verse)
So since I have such a hope, I speak with great frankness,
2 Corinthians 3:13 (show verse)
not like Moses, who used to wear a veil over his face, to keep the Israelites from gazing at the fading of the splendor from it.
2 Corinthians 3:14 (show verse)
Their minds were dulled. For to this day, that same veil remains unlifted, when they read the old agreement, for only through union with Christ is it removed.
2 Corinthians 3:15 (show verse)
Why, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil hangs over their minds,
2 Corinthians 3:16 (show verse)
but "whenever a man turns to the Lord, the veil is removed."
2 Corinthians 3:17 (show verse)
Now the Lord here means the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
2 Corinthians 3:18 (show verse)
And all of us, reflecting the splendor of the Lord in our unveiled faces, are being changed into likeness to him, from one degree of splendor to another, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.