MODERN LITERAL VERSION

3:1 Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? As if we do not need, as some, letters of commendation to you* or ones of commendation from you*?
3:2 You* are our letter, inscribed in our hearts, known and read by all men;
3:3 being manifested that you* are a letter of Christ, who are served by us, not inscribed with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets of stone, but in tablets, in fleshly hearts.
3:4 Now we have such confidence through Christ toward God;
3:5 not that we are sufficient from ourselves, to reason anything as out of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God;
3:6 who also made us sufficient as servants of a new covenant*; not of the writing, but of the Spirit; for* the writing kills, but the Spirit gives-life.
3:7 But if the service of death, by writings having been engraved in stones, happened with glory, so-that the sons of Israel could not stare at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which was being done-away-with.
3:8 How will the service of the Spirit not rather be with glory?
3:9 For* if the service of condemnation has glory, how much rather is the service of righteousness abounding in glory.
3:10 For* even what has also been made glorious, has not been made glorious in this respect, because of the glory which surpasses it.
3:11 For* if what was being done-away was with glory, what remains is much more in glory.

3:12 Therefore having such a hope, we are using much boldness,
3:13 and are not just-as Moses, who placed a veil upon his face, that the sons of Israel might not stare at the end of what was being done-away-with.
3:14 But their minds were hardened; for* till this day, the same veil remains upon the public-reading of the old covenant*, not being unveiled, which is done-away in Christ.
3:15 But to this day, when Moses is read, a veil is laying upon their heart.
3:16 But whenever one has turned to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
3:18 But we all, with an unveiled face, see the reflection of the glory of the Lord, and are being transfigured into the same image from glory to glory, just-as from the Lord, the Spirit.