2 Corinthians 2–3

2So I made up my mind not to come to you again to make you sad. ²For if I were to make you sad, who would be left to cheer me up? Only the very persons I had made sad. ³That is why I wrote that letter to you—I did not want to come to you and be made sad by the very people who should make me glad. For I am convinced that when I am happy, then all of you are happy too. ⁴I wrote to you with a greatly troubled and distressed heart and with many tears; my purpose was not to make you sad, but to make you realize how much I love you all.

Forgiveness for the Offender

⁵Now, if anyone has made somebody sad, he has not done it to me but to all of you—in part at least. (I say this because I do not want to be too hard on him.) ⁶It is enough that this person has been punished in this way by most of you. ⁷Now, however, you should forgive him and encourage him, in order to keep him from becoming so sad as to give up completely. ⁸And so I beg you to let him know that you really do love him. ⁹I wrote you that letter because I wanted to find out how well you had stood the test and whether you are always ready to obey my instructions. ¹⁰When you forgive someone for what he or she has done, I forgive them too. For when I forgive—if, indeed, I need to forgive anything—I do it in Christ’s presence because of you, ¹¹in order to keep Satan from getting the upper hand of us; for we know what his plans are.

Paul’s Anxiety in Troas

^12*When I arrived in Troas to preach the Good News about Christ, I found that the Lord had opened the way for the work there. ^13*But I was deeply worried, because I could not find our brother Titus. So I said goodbye to the people there and went on to Macedonia.

Victory through Christ

¹⁴But thanks be to God! For in union with Christ we are always led by God as prisoners in Christ’s victory procession. God uses us to make the knowledge about Christ spread everywhere like a sweet fragrance. ¹⁵For we are like a sweet-smelling incense offered by Christ to God, which spreads among those who are being saved and those who are being lost. ¹⁶For those who are being lost, it is a deadly stench that kills; but for those who are being saved, it is a fragrance that brings life. Who, then, is capable of such a task? ¹⁷We are not like so many others, who handle God’s message as if it were cheap merchandise; but because God has sent us, we speak with sincerity in his presence, as servants of Christ.

Servants of the New Covenant

3Does this sound as if we were again boasting about ourselves? Could it be that, like some other people, we need letters of recommendation to you or from you? ²You yourselves are the letter we have, written on our hearts for everyone to know and read. ^3*It is clear that Christ himself wrote this letter and sent it by us. It is written, not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, and not on stone tablets but on human hearts.

⁴We say this because we have confidence in God through Christ. ⁵There is nothing in us that allows us to claim that we are capable of doing this work. The capacity we have comes from God; ^6*it is he who made us capable of serving the new covenant, which consists not of a written law but of the Spirit. The written law brings death, but the Spirit gives life.

^7*The Law was carved in letters on stone tablets, and God’s glory appeared when it was given. Even though the brightness on Moses’ face was fading, it was so strong that the people of Israel could not keep their eyes fixed on him. If the Law, which brings death when it is in force, came with such glory, ⁸how much greater is the glory that belongs to the activity of the Spirit! ⁹The system which brings condemnation was glorious; how much more glorious is the activity which brings salvation! ¹⁰We may say that because of the far brighter glory now the glory that was so bright in the past is gone. ¹¹For if there was glory in that which lasted for a while, how much more glory is there in that which lasts for ever!

¹²Because we have this hope, we are very bold. ^13*We are not like Moses, who had to put a veil over his face so that the people of Israel would not see the brightness fade and disappear. ¹⁴Their minds, indeed, were closed; and to this very day their minds are covered with the same veil as they read the books of the old covenant. The veil is removed only when a person is joined to Christ. ¹⁵Even today, whenever they read the Law of Moses, the veil still covers their minds. ^16*But it can be removed, as the scripture says about Moses: “His veil was removed when he turned to the Lord.”^{c 17}Now, “the Lord” in this passage is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is present, there is freedom. ¹⁸All of us, then, reflect the glory of the Lord with uncovered faces; and that same glory, coming from the Lord, who is the Spirit, transforms us into his likeness in an ever greater degree of glory.