Parallel Bible results for "2 Corinthians 3:1-8"

2 Corinthians 3:1-8

The Message Bible MSG

1 Does it sound like we're patting ourselves on the back, insisting on our credentials, asserting our authority? Well, we're not. Neither do we need letters of endorsement, either to you or from you.

2 You yourselves are all the endorsement we need. Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you.

3 Christ himself wrote it - not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives - and we publish it.

4 We couldn't be more sure of ourselves in this - that you, written by Christ himself for God, are our letter of recommendation.

5 We wouldn't think of writing this kind of letter about ourselves. Only God can write such a letter.

6 His letter authorizes us to help carry out this new plan of action. The plan wasn't written out with ink on paper, with pages and pages of legal footnotes, killing your spirit. It's written with Spirit on spirit, his life on our lives!

7 The Government of Death, its constitution chiseled on stone tablets, had a dazzling inaugural. Moses' face as he delivered the tablets was so bright that day (even though it would fade soon enough) that the people of Israel could no more look right at him than stare into the sun.

8 How much more dazzling, then, the Government of Living Spirit?

New International Version NIV

1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you?

2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone.

3 You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

4 Such confidence we have through Christ before God.

5 Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.

6 He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

7 Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, transitory though it was,

8 will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?