2 Corinthians 3 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~AD 55-56, at a point when travelling teachers were arriving in Corinth carrying formal letters of introduction
Location
Written from Macedonia to Corinth, with the argument reaching back to Mount Sinai in the wilderness roughly 1,400 years earlier
Audience
The Corinthian church, including Jewish believers who valued the law of Moses and Gentiles being told the old covenant had been surpassed
Situation
Paul says he needs no letter of recommendation because the changed lives of the Corinthians are his letter. He then contrasts the covenant carved on stone at Sinai with a covenant written on human hearts, using the fading brightness on Moses's face as his illustration.
Key Background
Letters of recommendation were standard equipment for travelling teachers and traders across the empire, since a stranger arriving in a distant city had no other way to establish his credentials, and Paul's rivals evidently carried impressive ones. The story he draws on comes from Exodus, where Moses came down from the mountain with his face shining and covered it with a veil, and Paul reads the veil as concealing that the brightness was already fading. Writing on hearts rather than stone quotes the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who had promised a covenant that would work from the inside rather than as an external rule, so the argument would land with anyone raised on the Hebrew scriptures.
Are we starting to promote ourselves again? We don't need of to you or from you, do we — like some people apparently do?
You yourselves are our — written on our seen and read by everyone.
It's obvious that you are a letter from The produced through our — written not with ink but with the of the not on but on the of human hearts.
This is the kind of we have before God through The One.
Not that we're 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 — not based on a but on the Because the but the
Now if the of — carved in letters on stone — came with such that the Israelites couldn't even look at Moses' face because it was shining so brightly (even though that was already
how much more radiant will the of the be?
If the system that brought had radiance, the system that with overflows with so much more!
In fact, what was once radiant has lost its entirely compared to the of the new.
Because if what was came with radiance, what has so much more radiance!
So since we have this kind of we speak with —
not like Moses, who put a over his face so the Israelites wouldn't see the radiance to
But their minds were To this day, the same veil remains when the is read — it hasn't been lifted, because it's only removed through The One.
Even today, whenever is a veil lies over their hearts.
But whenever someone to the the veil is taken away.
Now "the Lord" in that passage refers to the — and wherever the of the Lord is, there is
And all of us, with the Lord's are being into the same — from of to the And this comes from the Lord, who is the Breath.