(1) Are we starting again to recommend ourselves? Or do we, perhaps, like some men, need letters of recommendation to YOU or from YOU? (2) YOU yourselves are our letter, inscribed on our hearts and known and being read by all mankind. (3) For YOU are shown to be a letter of Christ written by us as ministers, inscribed not with ink but with spirit of a living God, not on stone tablets, but on fleshly tablets, on hearts. ... (5) Not that we of ourselves are adequately qualified to reckon anything as issuing from ourselves, but our being adequately qualified issues from God, (6) who has indeed adequately qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not of a written code, but of spirit; for the written code condemns to death, but the spirit makes alive.
Scripture quotations are taken from
New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures,
published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Inc.