(Tap footnote to read it. Old Testament quotations are underlined. "Love" with a caret ("^love") is agapé.1"agapé" The Greek words ἀγάπη (agapé, noun), and ἀγαπάω (agapaó; verb) are typically translated "love". However, unlike our English word "love" – which primarily speaks of affection and feelings – agapé centers on choice and behavior. It’s the "love" based on will, choice, behavior, and action; not feelings. (Feelings-based love is the Greek word φιλέω (phileó), which properly means "brotherly love/affection".) Thus, you could hate someone passionately and still treat him with "agapé". Agapé "love" is best understood as the pursuit of what is most beneficial to someone or something, regardless of the cost to yourself or the type of response received from the person or thing. It can also indicate a preference for someone or something over other things. )
The New and Old Covenants
- Do we begin to commend ourselves again? Or do we need letters of commendation for you (or from you) as some do?
- You are our letter, which is *written in our hearts, being known and being read by all men,
- revealing that you’re a letter of the Anointed, served by us, *written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God. Not on stone tablets, but on fleshly tablets of the heart.
- And we have confidence like this toward God through the Anointed.
- Not that from ourselves we’re fit to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our fitness is from God,
- who also made us fit servants of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit brings to life.
- But if the ministry of death (in letters that have been engraved on stones) happened in such glory that the sons of Israel weren’t able to gaze into the face of Moses because of the glory on his face (which is nullified),
- how will the ministry of the Spirit not be in more glory?
- For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness overflows in much more glory.
- For even what was *glorified, now isn’t *glorified in this respect because of the glory which surpasses it.
- For if what is nullified came through glory, what remains is much more in glory.
- And having such a hope, we therefore employ much boldness.
- And not like Moses, who was putting a veil on his face so the sons of Israel couldn’t gaze into the end of what was nullified.
- But their minds were hardened.1“were hardened” could also be translated “were made calloused”. The Greek word refers to making something harder which carries the connotation of being insensate, like a callous. For the same veil remains until this present day, not being unveiled by the reading of the old covenant because it’s nullified in the Anointed.
- But whenever Moses is read until today, a veil lies over their hearts.
- And whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
- Now the Lord is Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
- But we all with an *unveiled face reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as it’s from the Spirit of the Lord.
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