1Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you?
2You yourselves are our letter, inscribed on our hearts, known and read by everyone.
3It is clear 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.
4Such confidence before God is ours through Christ.
5Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim that anything comes from us, but our competence comes from God.
6And He has qualified us as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.