1. Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you?
2. You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody.
3. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
4. Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God.
5. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.
6. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
1. Therefore, since through God's mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.
7. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.
2 Timothy 1:3-8
3. I thank God, whom I serve, as my forefathers did, with a clear conscience, as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers.
4. Recalling your tears, I long to see you, so that I may be filled with joy.
5. I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.
6. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.
7. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.
8. So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God,