# Confidence - 2 CORINTHIANS 3:4-11 - 2024-09-04 Notice today that St. Paul draws a distinction between the source of his, and our, confidence. It doesn't arise within him from himself, or from checking a box (remember yesterday?) Rather the confidence with which we stand before the Throne of God to worship him comes from God himself. *Brethren, such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now if the dispensation of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such splendor that the Israelites could not look at Moses' face because of its brightness, fading as this was, will not the dispensation of the Spirit be attended with greater splendor? For if there was splendor in the dispensation of condemnation, the dispensation of righteousness must far exceed it in splendor. Indeed, in this case, what once had splendor has come to have no splendor at all, because of the splendor that surpasses it. For if what faded away came with splendor, what is permanent must have much more splendor. - 2 CORINTHIANS 3:4-11* See, just like yesterday, if we have a checklist then we can easily find ourselves building up our own confidence in the fact we've done the things, rather than in the reality that we cannot. Remember today that our life, our future, our eternity rests in the hands of the eternal one, not in whether we checked a number of boxes in our lives.