2 Corinthians 3 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Are we starting to promote ourselves again? We don't need letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we — like some people apparently do?

You yourselves are our letter — written on our hearts, seen and read by everyone.

It's obvious that you are a letter from The One, produced through our service — written not with ink but with the Breath of the living God, not on stone tablets but on the tablets of human hearts.

This is the kind of confidence we have before God through The One.

Not that we're competent on our own to claim anything comes from us — our competence comes from God.

He's the one who made us competent to be servants of a new covenant — not based on a written code but on the Breath. Because the written code kills, but the Breath gives life.

Now if the old system of death — carved in letters on stone — came with such radiance that the Israelites couldn't even look at Moses' face because it was shining so brightly (even though that radiance was already fading),

how much more radiant will the system of the Breath be?

If the system that brought condemnation had radiance, the system that makes people right with God overflows with so much more!

In fact, what was once radiant has lost its radiance entirely compared to the surpassing radiance of the new.

Because if what was fading away came with radiance, what lasts forever has so much more radiance!

So since we have this kind of hope, we speak with total openness —

not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so the Israelites wouldn't see the radiance fading to nothing.

But their minds were hardened. To this day, the same veil remains when the old covenant is read — it hasn't been lifted, because it's only removed through The One.

Even today, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts.

But whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

Now "the Lord" in that passage refers to the Breath — and wherever the Breath of the Lord is, there is freedom.

And all of us, with unveiled faces reflecting the Lord's radiance, are being transformed into the same image — from one degree of radiance to the next. And this comes from the Lord, who is the Breath.