The Veil Can Come Off (2 Corinthians 3:12-18)
Today’s Word
[Unveiled Faces] (NIV)
12 Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold.
13 We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away.
14 But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away.
15 Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts.
16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
Background
In the paragraph just before this one, Paul set the glory of two ministries side by side and weighed them. If what was passing away came with that much light, how much greater must the glory of what remains be? Today’s passage begins standing on the answer. That is what the opening phrase means by such a hope: the certainty that the glory of this work does not dim with time.
The first fruit of that certainty Paul calls boldness. The Greek is parrhesia, which originally meant speech made in the public square, speech with nothing held back. It does not describe a loud personality. It describes a person with nothing to hide. Someone who knows his resources will eventually run out learns to be careful with his words. Someone holding on to what will not run out has no reason to conceal anything.
So Paul goes back to the face of Moses. The scene is Exodus 34. Moses came down from Sinai with his face shining, and the people were afraid to come near. From then on, when he spoke to the people he put a veil over his face, and when he went in before the Lord he took it off. In, and it came off. Out, and it went back on. Over and over.
Reading that scene, Paul adds something Exodus does not say. He says Moses wore the veil to keep the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. In other words, he covered the slow fading of the light. This is Paul’s reading, and scholars have long debated it. But Paul’s interest is not in finding fault with Moses. His point is that the glory of the old covenant was genuine yet already moving toward its end, that the end was hidden, and that people therefore assumed this was the final light there would ever be.
Paul dwells on this at length because of the situation in Corinth. The people running him down looked far more impressive. They had letters of reference, they had eloquence, they had things to display. Standing next to them, Paul chooses the opposite road rather than polishing himself. I do not cover anything, he says. This is not a strategy. It follows from the nature of the gospel he carries. A person announcing something that will not fade has no need to manage his own face.
In verse 14 the veil changes location. What lay over Moses’ face is now lying over the heart of the person reading. Paul writes that their minds were made dull. The Greek comes from a word for growing a callus. Nothing slammed shut; something was pressed for a long time and slowly lost feeling. And the people Paul has in mind here are not distant strangers. They are his own people, the ones he wrote about in Romans with great sorrow in his heart. So the sentence is closer to a lament than an accusation.
The picture Paul draws is concrete. Every Sabbath, the writings of Moses were read aloud in the synagogue. The same text, the same voice, and yet one person sees Christ in it and another does not. The difference is not in the text. It is in where the veil is.
Then verse 16 opens a door. Whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. The sentence is lifted almost word for word from Exodus 34:34, where Moses removed the veil each time he went in before the Lord. Paul takes what had been granted to one man and makes it open to anyone. And he does not describe it as something that happens once. It happens every time a person turns.
Verses 17 and 18 say what takes place in that moment. The Lord is the Spirit, and where that Spirit is, there is freedom. Then the last verse carries one small word that matters enormously. We all. The place Moses entered alone is now a place where everyone stands with their face lifted. And Paul puts the change that happens there in the passive voice. We do not transform ourselves. We are transformed while we look.
The shape of the whole letter is laid out in an introduction to 2 Corinthians. The paragraph immediately before today’s reading is covered in The Glory That Fades and the Glory That Lasts (2 Corinthians 3:7-11), and Paul’s own account of living with nothing concealed appears in Nothing Hidden Between the Lines (2 Corinthians 1:12-14).
Key Words Made Simple
- Hope: Greek elpis. Not a vague wish but an expectation with grounds. For Paul the grounds are the glory described in the previous paragraph, the glory that does not fade.
- Bold: Greek parrhesia. Speech in the open square, speech with nothing withheld. It names a condition rather than a temperament: having nothing to hide.
- Veil: Greek kalymma, a covering. In Exodus it is the cloth over Moses’ face, but Paul uses the same word for whatever lies over a person’s heart.
- Passing away: Greek katargeo, to be rendered inactive, to stop working. It appears four times in chapter 3, carrying the sense that the glory of the old covenant was finishing its task and stepping aside.
- Made dull: Greek poroo, to harden, to form a callus. It does not describe a door slamming shut but a surface that slowly loses feeling under long pressure.
- Old covenant: The covenant made at Sinai and the writings that carry it, the books of Moses. Our word for the Old Testament has its root here.
- Turns: Greek epistrepho, to change direction, to turn one’s face the other way. Scripture often uses it for repentance.
- Freedom: Greek eleutheria. Not permission to do as one pleases but release from what was binding. Here it is release from the obligation to keep one’s face covered.
- Contemplate: Greek katoptrizomai, a word tied to mirrors, so it can be rendered either as beholding or as reflecting. Either way it means looking at something for a long time. It is not a glance.
- Transformed: Greek metamorphoumai, a change of form from the inside rather than a change of surface. Paul writes it in the present tense and the passive voice: it is happening now, and someone else is doing it.
- From glory to glory: An expression for progress by stages rather than completion in a single moment. It describes a road being walked, not a destination reached.
Expressions Worth Noting
- “Since we have such a hope, we are very bold” (v. 12)
- Hope comes first, not boldness. What a person is holding on to shapes how that person carries themselves.
- Holding something that will end makes you guarded. Holding something that remains removes the reason to hide.
- “We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face” (v. 13)
- Paul sums up his whole manner of ministry in one line. He does not cover things over.
- There were people in Corinth calling him unimpressive. Paul does not try to hide that. Refusing to hide it is precisely his credential.
- “Their minds were made dull” (v. 14)
- The veil moves. It travels from the face of the speaker to the heart of the listener.
- The problem is no longer on the speaking side but on the hearing side. This is Paul explaining why, in front of the same Scripture, one person sees and another does not.
- “Whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away” (v. 16)
- The one doing the removing is not us. Paul says the veil is taken away when we turn; he does not tell us to tear it off.
- The word whenever carries weight. This is not a door that closes after one failure.
- “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (v. 17)
- Freedom here is not the absence of rules but the absence of any need to cover your face.
- A person who does not have to dress themselves up before God tends to dress themselves up less in front of people too.
- “And we all, who with unveiled faces” (v. 18)
- The conclusion of the paragraph sits in those two words, we all. The place Moses entered by himself is now open to everyone.
- Paul is not describing the experience of exceptional people. He is describing ordinary life for anyone who believes.
What the Passage Says
- Hope produces boldness (v. 12). A person holding on to a glory that will not fade stops straining to prove himself. Paul’s boldness comes not from his temperament but from what he believes.
- Servants of the new covenant do not cover things over (v. 13). Moses had to hide a fading light; Paul has nothing to hide, because the glory he carries does not grow faint.
- The veil is on hearts, not faces (vv. 14-15). The difficulty is not that Scripture is obscure. It is that something lies over the heart, keeping people from seeing what is in front of them.
- The veil is lifted when a person turns (vv. 16-17). We do not pull it off ourselves; it is removed as we turn toward the Lord. And where it is removed, there is freedom.
- Transformation happens while we look (v. 18). Everyone now lifts their face toward the Lord’s glory. That change is not something we produce but something done to us, and it does not finish in one moment. It moves from glory to glory.
Standing Before This Word Today
Reading this passage, you find yourself staying with one gesture: a cloth being pulled across a face.
Paul explains why Moses wore the veil. To keep people from seeing the light go out. That single line stays with us because the gesture is so familiar. Not wanting anyone to notice that what used to be there is gone, not wanting to hear that you are not what you were, is something everyone knows. So we say we are fine. We arrange our expression, and then we open the door.
Inside faith the gesture becomes more refined. Instead of saying our prayer life has dried up, we say things have been busy. Instead of saying our heart has cooled, we reach for familiar religious language. We are not lying. We are simply laying one layer of cloth over a fading light. And though the cloth seems to be for other people, given enough time it stops us from looking underneath it ourselves.
The boldness Paul describes stands on the opposite side. He looked unimpressive to the Corinthians, and he knew it. Yet instead of covering that over, he wrote it plainly into his letter. He could do that because he had nothing shining in himself that needed protecting. The glory he held was not on his face. A person with nothing to protect has nothing to hide.
The second thing that holds you is the moment the veil changes places. The cloth that was over Moses’ face is now lying over the heart of the reader.
Paul describes that heart as made dull, from a word that means growing a callus. Calluses do not form overnight. The same spot is pressed for a long time until it slowly thickens. Hearts work the same way. Very few people close to God on a single afternoon. But after hearing the same word many times and walking past it many times, the place that used to sting stops registering. Growing familiar means growing comfortable, and it also means feeling less.
That is why people who have read the Bible for a long time grow careful at this point. The more we know, the less we hear that is new. We open a passage and the conclusion arrives before the text does; we file the word away before it has a chance to turn toward us. The veil usually arrives in the shape of familiarity, not ignorance.
The third thing is verse 16. Whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
The most comforting part of that sentence is the passive voice. Our task is not to tear the cloth off but to change direction. If you have noticed that your heart has hardened, you do not have to soften it first and then approach. You turn, as you are. The removing is done by someone else.
And then there is that word, whenever. It already assumes that a veil lifted once can settle back down. Paul knew the life of faith does not run in a straight line. The fact that it has come back is not a reason to stay away. It is the reason to turn again.
The fourth thing sits between them, in verse 17. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
The word freedom first suggests a state where anything is permitted. But in the flow of this paragraph it means something else: release from the obligation to keep your face covered. Holding a steady expression in front of people is more exhausting than we admit. So as not to disappoint anyone, so as not to worry them, so that what we have built does not come apart, we adjust the cloth several times a day. If there is even one place where that work is unnecessary, that is freedom.
And a person who has one such place loosens a little everywhere else. Knowing you do not have to compose yourself before God makes you compose yourself less before people. The reverse is also true: someone who arrives even before God with a tidy face never rests anywhere.
The fifth thing is the final verse. We all, with unveiled faces, are being transformed as we behold the Lord’s glory.
What deserves attention here is that the transformation is not a command. Paul does not say be transformed; he says you are being transformed. Our part is only to look. This is the exact opposite of fixing your expression in a mirror. In a mirror we look at ourselves. Here we look at the Lord. And what stubbornly refused to change while we examined and corrected ourselves begins to change while we look for a long time at someone else.
The verb Paul uses is in the present tense, not the perfect. From glory to glory says the same thing. One step and then the next. So it is not strange if today looks much like yesterday. A callus takes a long pressing to form, and an unveiled face takes a long looking too.
Finally, look again at those two words, we all. In Exodus the one person who could enter the Lord’s presence and take off the veil was Moses. Everyone else saw the afterglow on his face from a distance. Paul now writes we all. The place is no longer one that a special person enters on our behalf. It is a place where anyone may stand with their face lifted.
So the question this passage puts to an ordinary day is a single one. What kind of face am I wearing before God right now? A composed one, or the one I actually have? Being told you do not have to cover up does not mean you have become impressive enough to go uncovered. It means that behind a veil you cannot look at him, and without looking, nothing changes.
Living It Out
- Notice one veil you are wearing today. If you told someone you were fine, take a quiet moment to ask whether that was true. This is not about telling everyone everything. It is about practicing not covering, at least before God.
- Reread a passage you know too well. Choose a verse you usually skip because you already know it, and read it slowly again. A callus shows up more clearly on familiar ground than on new ground.
- Look before you try to fix. If there is something about yourself you want changed, spend a moment today holding it before the Lord instead of working at it. The passage says transformation happens while we look.
- Do not postpone turning back. If you are putting off prayer because it has been a long time, do not wait until you have prepared yourself. Turn as you are. The lifting is not our work.
- Do not rush someone else’s covered face. If someone near you is struggling, rather than pressing them to open up, make a place where they do not have to cover. The comfort we saw in That Is Punishment Enough (2 Corinthians 2:5-11) usually took that shape.
Questions to Sit With
- What am I currently calling fine? Is that answer the truth, or is it a covering?
- Is there a passage that used to convict me and now passes by without a sound? When did that begin?
- Is there something I believe I must sort out before I can come to God?
- Which gets more of my time: working to change myself, or looking at the Lord?
- If someone near me is living behind a veil, what kind of place am I being for them?
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