2 Corinthians 2–3

²So I made up my mind not to make another visit that causes you grief.^{* 2}For if I cause you grief, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have grieved? ³And I wrote as I did, so that when I came, I might not suffer grief from those who should have made me rejoice, for I am confident about all of you, that my joy would be the joy of all of you.^{* 4}For I wrote you out of much distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you grief but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.

Forgiveness for the Offender

⁵But if anyone has caused grief, he has caused it not to me but to some extent—not to exaggerate it—to all of you. ⁶This punishment by the majority is enough for such a person;^{* 7}so now instead you should forgive and console him, so that he may not be overwhelmed by even worse grief. ⁸So I urge you to reaffirm your love for him. ⁹I wrote for this reason: to test you and to know whether you are obedient in everything.^{* 10}Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. In fact, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ. ¹¹And we do this so that we may not be outwitted by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his designs.

Paul’s Anxiety in Troas

¹²When I came to Troas to proclaim the good news^h of Christ, a door was opened for me in the Lord,^{* 13}but my mind could not rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I said farewell to them and went on to Macedonia.

¹⁴But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him.^{i 15}For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing:^{* 16}to the one group a fragrance from death^j to death, to the other a fragrance from life^k to life. Who is qualified for these things?^{* 17}For we are not peddlers of God’s word like so many,^l but as persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God, we are speaking in Christ before God.^*

Ministers of the New Covenant

³Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we?^{* 2}You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all, ³and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are human hearts.^m*

⁴Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. ⁵Not that we are qualified of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our qualification is from God,^{* 6}who has made us qualified to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.^*

⁷Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets,ⁿ came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’s face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside,^{* 8}how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? ⁹For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation,^o much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory!^{* 10}Indeed, what once had glory has in this respect lost its glory because of the greater glory, ¹¹for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!

¹²Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with complete frankness,^{* 13}not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that^p was being set aside.^{* 14}But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, the same veil is still there; it is not unveiled since in Christ it is set aside.^{* 15}Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds,^{q 16}but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.^{* 17}Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.^{* 18}And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.^*