as commissioned by God, in God's presence and in communion
with Christ, so we speak.
003:001 Do you say that this is self-recommendation once more?
Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you
or from you?
003:002 Our letter of recommendation is yourselves--a letter written
on our hearts and everywhere known and read.
003:003 For all can see that you are a letter of Christ entrusted
to our care, and written not with ink, but with the Spirit
of the ever-living God--and not on tablets of stone,
but on human hearts as tablets.
003:004 Such is the confidence which we have through Christ in the
presence of God;
003:005 not that of ourselves we are competent to decide anything
by our own reasonings, but our competency comes from God.
003:006 It is He also who has made us competent to serve Him in connexion
with a new Covenant, which is not a written code but a Spirit;
for the written code inflicts death, but the Spirit gives Life.
003:007 If, however, the service that proclaims death--its code
being engraved in writing upon stones--came with glory,
so that the children of Israel could not look steadily
on the face of Moses because of the brightness of his face--
a vanishing brightness;
003:008 will not the service of the Spirit be far more glorious?
003:009 For if the service which pronounces doom had glory, far more
glorious still is the service which tells of righteousness.
003:010 For, in fact, that which was once resplendent in glory has no
glory at all in this respect, that it pales before the glory
which surpasses it.
003:011 For if that which was to be abolished came with glory,