What qualifies the letter-and-spirit comparison?

Paul asks whether they begin self-commendation again or need letters to or from readers as some do. The readers are their epistle in their hearts, known and read by all, manifested as Christ’s epistle ministered by them. It is written by the living God’s Spirit rather than ink, on fleshly hearts rather than stone. No particular itinerant teachers or physical inscription scene is identified. Confidence is through Christ toward God; sufficiency to think anything of themselves is from God, who made them fit new-testament ministers, in spirit rather than letter. Letter kills and spirit quickens; the printed note qualifies letter as not rightly understood and taken without spirit. The qualification must not disappear into a claim that all written law necessarily kills.

Paul compares glory: if the death ministration engraved on stone was glorious, so Israel could not steadfastly view Moses’s glorious countenance which is made void, how much greater spirit ministry? Condemnation’s glory is exceeded by justice’s glory. What was glorious is not glorified in this part because of surpassing glory; what remains has more glory than what is done away. These comparisons do not supply numerical degrees of splendour or a particular law-exposes-sin mechanism.

Such hope gives much confidence, unlike Moses’s veil preventing steadfast looking at what is made void. Senses were dulled; the veil remains when old testament is read, made void in Christ. It is on hearts when Moses is read until conversion to the Lord removes it. The chapter does not locate the reading in a synagogue or explain Moses’s motive as disguising a dwindling light. The Lord is a Spirit, and where his Spirit is, liberty is. With open face they behold the Lord’s glory and are transformed into the same image from glory to glory by his Spirit. The printed verb is beholding, not another rendering of reflecting as in a mirror; no automatic schedule or psychological mechanism of transformation is specified.