The cover-up that has robbed you of precious truth.

I have been gradually posting excerpts from the book I am working on about Jesus’ prayer for the church in John 17.

In my last post on this (The wrong Gospel and wrong mission) I pointed out that Jesus seemed to believe the main thing the church needed to do in order to help the world believe in him was to love each other.

In this draft chapter I unpack what Jesus said he gave us so that might be possible, and it leads to an exploration of what Eugene Peterson calls a “cover up” by Modern Christians of a central biblical truth.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

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So, there you go. It’s simple.

All we need to do is love God and each other, and everything will be different.

There is only one problem: We can’t. We don’t have what it takes, at least in our own strength.

Which brings us to the next part of the prayer:

“I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one.”[1]

Jesus seems to think that the glory of God is somehow the key to the church being one. This is one of those verses that most people skip over because they assume Jesus couldn’t be saying what he appears to be saying. After all, how could glory help people cooperate?

We misunderstand this verse because few Christians know what Jesus means by “the glory.” The author of The Message version of the Bible, Eugene Peterson, hits the nail on the head when he writes:

One of the severe handicaps under which the church operates is the cover-up of the Glory with respectable substitutes such as acceptance and honour, success and ‘relevance.’ Over and over again, we miss it.”^[2]

A quick Google shows that some of the most prominent Christian teachers and writers define glory in terms that make no sense in the context of Jesus’ statement. John Piper believes the glory of God is “the infinite beauty and greatness of God’s manifold perfections.”[3] Christopher Morgan at the Gospel Coalition believes God’s glory is “the magnificence, worth, loveliness, and grandeur of his many perfections…”[4] Mark Roberts at patheos.com believes God’s glory is “God’s weightiness in wonderful qualities such as might, beauty, goodness, justice, and honour.”[5] None of these definitions give any clue as to how “the glory” might help Christians be one, and they are all missing the central biblical picture of what glory actually is.

Looking at a dictionary won’t help you any better. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the standard English usage of the word means “High renown or honour won by notable achievements,” “Magnificence or great beauty,” or “Praise, worship, and thanksgiving offered to a deity”, or “A luminous ring or halo, especially as depicted around the head of Jesus Christ or a saint.”^[6]

None of these definitions give any sense of how glory could possibly help the church be one.

Fortunately, there is another definition that every Jewish person is very familiar with that makes a lot more sense of what Jesus might be talking about.

Show me your glory

Moses had had a difficult day.

He had returned from Mt. Sinai after a most remarkable time of direct communication with God, carrying two stone tablets that God had inscribed with the law and commandments, only to find that his brother Aaron had led the people astray in his absence. Aaron had built an idol in the shape of a calf, which the people declared to be the gods that had led them out of Egypt. Aaron also built an altar for the people to make sacrifices to his handiwork.

Needless to say, both God and Moses were upset. Moses so much so that, in a fit of rage, he took the tablets that God had written as the basis for the social order of His chosen people and threw them to the ground, where they shattered into little pieces.[7] God was so upset that he declared to Moses that he would no longer go with Israel into the Promised Land.[8]

Moses destroyed the calf and put to death about three thousand people in an effort to deal with the rebellion. He then had to trudge back to the Lord’s presence to beg him to continue to travel with Israel and ask for another copy of the tablets.

There is almost a hint of blame in his voice when he says to God, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me.”[9] I also detect a level of stubbornness from Moses when he says, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth ?”[10]

After God commits to going with the people, it is almost as though Moses feels like he needs something else to sustain him, which is perhaps understandable given his experience. He asks the question of God that I have been asking of you in this chapter so far: “Now show me your glory.”[11]

The Hebrew word for glory is k?bôd, which means figuratively weight or heaviness.[12] Moses says to God, “After all this, I want to see the full weight of who you are. I want to really know you.”

God agrees to Moses’ request, with the proviso that he can only see partially. In fact, Moses will only really be able to hear. To see the full weight of who God is would be to look in his face, and that would kill any human being.

In Exodus 34, we finally see God’s revelation of his glory:

Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD.

And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.[13]

This Exodus passage is the revelation of God’s glory. This is what Jesus and every first-century Jewish person would have had in mind when they used the word ‘glory.’ But what is it?

God had prepared Moses for what he would experience when he said in 33:19, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence.”

The first thing that God reveals to Moses is that revealing his glory is related to proclaiming his name. This doesn’t make much sense to English speakers in the 21^st Century. For us, names are primarily markers of ownership. We put our names on pencil cases at school and on our social media accounts as we get older. Our written version of our name, our signature, is how we commit to legal agreements or let people know a letter is actually from us. Our names help identify us, but in our culture, they don’t say anything about who we are as people.

We see in the bible that names are given as an expression of the essence of a person rather than simply as identity markers. Esau is ‘hairy one’, and Jacob, who would steal his brother’s birthright, is the ‘one who replaces or supplants’. Daniel, whose life seems to be shaped by unjust decisions by others, is called ‘God is my judge,’ and David, whose relationship with God is the foundation of his and Israel’s life, is called ‘beloved.’

Moses had asked God for his name in Exodus 3:13, and God responded with:

God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” [God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ “This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.[14]

In effect, Moses had been asking God for some indication of his nature or character, and God’s response shows that there are no boundaries within which his essence could be contained. The original Hebrew of “I am who I am” is even more boundary-less than the English because it is phrased in a tense that can’t be captured in our language. The original conveys that God is also outside of time, as though he was saying, “I am who I was and who I will be.”

In Exodus 33 and 34, however, we see God’s character tied up in the expression of his name. Renowned Bible Scholar, Richard Baukham writes:

He may not see who God is, but he hears who God is. He hears from God himself God’s identity: his name (“YHWH,” represented in the Greek version by “the Lord”) and his character. As Israel so much needs to know, Moses hears that God is merciful, compassionate, forgiving, and faithful to his covenant promises. The story seems to suggest that God’s glory is the radiance of his character, goodness, and who he truly is.[15]

So, the name of God is shown in the glory of God, which is revealed as the character of God.

This simple truth is what most modern theologians and bible teachers have missed: the glory of God is not his beauty, grandeur, renown or a halo. The glory of God is God’s character, moral nature, and essence. It is who he is.

Revivalist Charles Finney was right when he said:

God considers his goodness, his moral attributes, as making up his essential glory. His glory does not consist in his natural attributes–his power, his wisdom, his omnipresence, his eternity–these are awful, they are fearful for us behold. But his glory lies in his goodness, his moral character, his justice, benevolence, holiness, mercy.[16]

While Western Christians tend to stick to the New Testament, Exodus 34:5-7 is one of, if not the, most crucial passages in the Old Testament, at least according to the number of times other writers in the Old Testament canon reference it.

The statement is repeated many times (Num. 14:18; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 103:8, 17; 145:8; Jer. 32:18-19; Joel 2:13; Jon. 4:2) and is alluded to numerous times.[17] Professor of Biblical Literature at Western Seminary, J. Carl Laney states, “The biblical writers clearly regarded Exodus 34:6-7 as a foundational statement about God.”[18]

One of the challenges for us Westerners is that the language of this passage is so dense that it is easier to skip straight past it. Perhaps we can learn from Jewish people who continue to see Exodus 34:5-7 as a pivotal revelation of the nature of God that is a foundation of their faith. Rather than seeing it as one paragraph, they call it ‘the thirteen attributes’[19] and engage with each word as an essential aspect of God’s self-revelation.

Here is a breakdown of each phrase:

Quality	Hebrew	Meaning
the compassionate	ra?ûm	Full of compassion
and gracious God,	?annûn;	Compassion after a person has sinned
slow to anger,	ereh apayim	Long-suffering, patient
abounding in love	?ese?	unfailing love, loyal love, devotion, kindness
and faithfulness,	eme?;	firmness, faithfulness, truth
maintaining love to thousands,	nâ?ar ?ese?; elep?	unfailing love, loyal love, devotion, kindness for thousands of people
and forgiving wickedness,	nâ?â avown	Forgiving (moral) evil: fault, iniquity, mischief
rebellion	p?eša‘	rebellion, transgression, trespass.
and sin.	?a?â’â	an offence (sometimes habitual sinfulness), and its penalty
Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished;	lô’ nâqâ ‘avown	By no means clear (or clean) the guilty
he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”	p?âqa? avown ’â? ?ên; ?ên  ?ên;	Punishment of a given type of sin in each new generation as that sin continues to be repeated down through the generations.

As you slowly read through these 13 attributes of God, you probably start feeling warm, safe and secure and then, as you hit the last two, find yourself torn.

We want a God who is compassionate and abounding in love, but a God who punishes children doesn’t sit comfortably at all. Unsurprisingly, in many (but not all) [20] Jewish traditions, the thirteen attributes stop partway through verse seven, preferring to focus on the more positive aspects of God’s self-revelation. It is apparent in the text, however, that God’s judgement and justice are as much a part of who he is as his compassion and love.

At a human level, judgement and justice seem contradictory to compassion and love. However, God is clear that he is completely both.

As we look again at the attributes revealed in Exodus 34:6-7, it becomes clear that these are not the characteristics of a God who is removed from the world’s complexity, pain and suffering. Each word is a direct, relational response to a broken and hurting world. Because of who we are, God must be slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love and forgiveness, and dealing with sin.

Western thinking was profoundly shaped by Plato, who perceived the Divine to be wholly separate from the mess and chaos of the world. As God revealed his glory to Moses, he showed that Plato wasn’t talking about Him.

Influenced by Platonic thinking and in response to Catholic teaching, the Protestant Reformation emphasised human depravity as the starting point for understanding God’s relationship with the world. As God reveals himself to Moses, he makes clear that his love and compassion for people are his starting point, but also that he is not blind to wickedness, rebellion and sin, which he responds to with both forgiveness and punishment.

The glory of God revealed to Moses is multi-faceted because he is responding to multi-faceted human beings.

Why Love and Punishment?

There are two truths introduced at the very start of the bible and reinforced all the way through. However, they are two truths that most popular expressions of the gospel message tend to underplay.

The first truth is that every human being is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) and, as such, is of innumerable worth. As Ecclesiastes says, God has set “eternity in the human heart,”[21] and there is part of us that is bigger than time and space. The biblical understanding is that every human being, at their core, longs for a relationship with the creator of the universe, and as an expression of God’s image, is worthy of love and faithfulness.

The second truth is that every human being is also self-centred. We know good, but we also know evil (Genesis 2:9). We long for truth and beauty but actively seek to minimise pain and maximise pleasure.

Both of these things are true of all of us. All of us are both good and evil.  While we each instinctively know this, it is something we are not quick to admit. It is far easier if we believe the world can be divided into good people and bad people. This is what Marxism attempted to do.

The central premise of Marxism was that the problem with the world was that power and wealth were unequally distributed and that all that needed to happen was that the evil rich needed to be overthrown for the sake of the workers. One of those involved in the early days of Communism was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He, like most Marxists, initially believed that the ills of the world could be fixed if the oppressive class were done away with. He writes:

In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments.[22]

Only after spending years in prison and reflecting on his actions and also what he saw in others did the truth begin to dawn:

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.[23]

Each one of us carries incredible beauty and goodness alongside profound evil and darkness. This is what it means to be a human being.

The glory of God is His response to both sides of us.

Jesus is the full expression of God’s glory

Glory is a central theme in the gospel of John, which refers to or references it 42 times.[24] Between chapters 12 and 17 of John, it is almost like Jesus is preoccupied with glory, and the word appears twenty-four times (an average of four times each chapter!).

The first time John introduces glory, he does so by directly referencing Exodus 34:6-7:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.[25]

It is impossible to overstate the significance of this verse and how it both sums up Christ’s role in fulfilling the Old Testament and frames his prayer in John 17.

Richard Bauckham points out how so much of this verse directly references Exodus 34. Firstly, the verse contrasts the fact that Moses could only hear God’s word. Now, through the incarnation, God is flesh.[26] The glory becomes visible.

Secondly, that visible glory comes and ‘makes his dwelling’ amongst us. This phrase evokes a picture of the Old Testament Tabernacle and how God’s glory dwelt with Israel in the shape of cloud and fire. Bauckham writes: “Now the glory in the flesh of Jesus Christ is God’s tent-dwelling among his people.”[27]

Thirdly, when John uses the phrase ‘full of grace and truth’, he intentionally quotes the precise Greek equivalent of the critical part of God’s self-expression in Exodus 34 to clarify that Jesus comes as the full expression of God’s multifaceted glory. Jesus is not just an expression of God’s grace. He is also an expression of the fullness of who he is, which includes his justice and judgment.

Bauckham writes, “The glory is the radiance of the character of God, the grace and truth about which Moses heard, but which the disciples of Jesus have seen in his human person and life.”[28]

In case anyone missed what he was trying to communicate about Jesus being the fulfilment of the glory that Moses only glimpsed, John says, in chapter 1, verse 17:

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.[29]

I will let Richard Bauckham show you just how significant this is and how it explains the odd time Jesus chose to say, “Now is the Son of Man glorified”:

Here, in verse 17, John refers to Moses explicitly. Again we have the contrast between hearing and seeing. The law was grace and truth in words. The same grace and truth of God “became” through Jesus—happened and were seen in his life and death. Jesus spoke the words of God’s grace and truth, certainly, but he also enacted God’s grace and truth.” [30]

As human beings, we tend to either grace OR truth. Some of us want to love everyone and avoid thinking anyone could be evil. Some of us want to focus on the truth and tell everyone else what to believe and how to behave, conveniently forgetting that we are broken and only partially see the truth.

Living in grace AND truth is living in a tension, and it’s not a tension we can resolve on our own.

This tension is only ultimately resolved on the cross. As Christopher Watkin writes:

How can God be both just and gracious, for if he is just then surely he will condemn sinners, and if he is gracious then surely he will forgive them? The tension is not resolved until the coming of Jesus, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14, emphasis added), who perfectly fulfils the requirements both of justice and of grace in his death on the cross.[31]

Jesus came not to give us ideas but to provide us with life by demonstrating what a life lived in the shape of the glory of God looks like. The cross was necessary because it was the ultimate expression of the total weight of God’s justice and truth, meeting the complete expression of God’s love and compassion.

Because our world is made up of human beings who are both good and evil, the truth and grace of the glory of God is the only framework within which we can experience whole life. As the old commentator Matthew Henry says, “God has been pleased therein to twist interests with us so that in seeking his glory, we really and effectually seek our own true interests.”^[32]

While this side of eternity, there is never such thing as a perfectly graceful and truthful society, a clear-eyed evaluation using the values of the glory of God as the metric gives followers of Jesus a way to care about what God cares about.

A very tangible measure of how the attributes of the glory of God are being expressed in a community is how its weakest members are faring. It is noticeable that in the Old Testament, the Prophets repeatedly ask how the widows, fatherless, foreigners, and poor were treated.[33]

The Prophet Zechariah names the implications of God’s glory when he says:

“This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.”[34]

Grace AND Truth are the irreducible values that created the kind of community where it is possible to be one-but-not-the-same. The world is ordinarily a place in which the richest, strongest and smartest get the best seats at the table. However, communities that are committed to true grace AND truth become places where there genuinely is equal opportunity for everyone and where every person is valued.

As Christopher Watkin writes, “This strong insistence on both justice and mercy has shown itself throughout the history of those nations influenced by Christian ideas. As Oliver O’Donovan notes, ‘The church asserted its own evangelical justice in society’s midst, and society, to a degree, had to defer to it,’ a justice that was ‘tempered’ in the ‘penumbra of forgiveness.’”[35]

Whenever the church has been at its best, it has sought to be an agent of God’s grace AND truth, and the tension of both attributes of God helps transform the church and the world around it.

So if the Old Testament, Jewish people and the New Testament so clearly understand God’s revelation of his glory to be his character that can be summarized as his Justice, Mercy and Compassion, why, as Eugene Peterson says, does the church miss it “over and over again”? ^[36]

At least part of the issue is the one I have already alluded to. We Christians like to hang out in the New Testament, so, as a result, we miss many ways that the New Testament continually draws on the Old Testament.

I also think Eugene Peterson is correct in that there has been a “cover-up of the glory”[37] because the glory of God is the revelation of the heart of who God is as being ethical. Since the Reformation, Protestant Christians have been quick to proclaim God’s grace as a free gift and wary of anything that looks like prescribing behaviour. This tendency has led to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called ‘cheap grace’, which he defined as:

“the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”[38]

The glory of God is a very inconvenient truth. It reveals that God’s character has implications for how people who declare themselves to be his people should conduct themselves in the world.

Rabbi Lance J. Sussaman writes:

 “The Glory of God describes a “universal set of behavioral norms for all people… who need to strive to be like God in order to fulfill their nature as having been created in the image of the One and only God.”^[39]

Or, as Richard R. Melick Jr says:

“Those who understand Jesus’ glory by faith, are called to act according to what they have seen. They represent God’s glory on earth by the values they hold as well as by their actions.^”[40]

The glory of God is not an abstraction. It is the purpose of our lives. The Westminster Shorter Catechism declares, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”[41]

Hopefully, as you have read this, you will have started to remember Bible verses that are beginning to make more sense.

As you start to realise the Glory of God is his moral character that can be summarized as his Grace and Truth, many bible verses that should not previously have made sense now do:

• For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Habakkuk 2:14)
• This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.(John 15:8)
• for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23)
• And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. (Romans 5:2-4)
• So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31)
• Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 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 (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)

If glory was about beauty, honour, or halos, none of the above verses makes sense, but in the context of Exodus 34 and God’s grace AND truth, each one takes on new significance.

When Jesus prays, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one” in John 17:22 he is declaring that the path to being one-but-not-the-same is not abstract but very tangible: it is through a church who choose like God chooses because they are ‘in’ Christ.

To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.[49]

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[1] John 17:22

^[2] Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (2005 ), Loc 2088

[3] https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-is-gods-glory–2  (Accessed 30 August 2023)

[4] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-glory-of-god/ (Accessed 30 August 2023)

[5] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thehighcalling/2015/02/what-is-gods-glory/ (Accessed 30 August 2023)

^[6] https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/glory

[7] Exodus 32

[8] Exodus 33:3

[9] Exodus 33:12

[10] Exodus 33:15-16 NIV

[11] Exodus 33:18

[12] Olive Tree Enhanced Strong’s Dictionary and Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT)

[13] Exodus 34:5-7

[14] Exodus 3:14-15 NIV

[15] Bauckham, Richard. Gospel of Glory (p. 50). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[16] Charles G. Finney Revelation of God’s Glory as reported in The Oberlin Evangelist (Dec 20 1843) http://www.gospeltruth.net/1843OE/431220_gods_glory.htm accessed August 31 2023

[17] Deuteronomy 5:9-10; 1 Kings 3:6; Lamentations 3:32; Daniel 9:4; and Nahum 1:3

[18] J. Carl Laney God’s Self-Revelation in Exodus 34:6-8 in Bibliotheca Sacra 158:629 (Jan 2001)

[19] They reach the number thirteen by including in their list God’s name (The Lord, the Lord).

[20] Maimonides, l.c.; Aaron ben Hayyim, l.c.; compare also Da’at Zekenim

[21] Ecclesiastes 3:11

[22] Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 2]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (p. 746). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

[23] Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 2] (p. 746). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

[24] Richard Bauckham Gospel of Glory ebook(2015), Loc 1001

[25] John 1:14 NIV

[26] Bauckham, Richard. Gospel of Glory (p. 50). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition

[27] Ibid (p51)

[28] Ibid (p52)

[29] John 1:17 NIV

[30] Bauckham, Richard. Gospel of Glory (p. 52). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[31] Watkin, Christopher. Biblical Critical Theory (p. 263). Zondervan Academic. Kindle Edition.

[32] Matthew Henry How to Begin Every Day with God in “Numerous Sermons and Papers” (1855) page 433

[33] Exodus 22:22, Deuteronomy 10:18, 14:29, 24:17. 24:19-21, 26:12-13, 27:19, Psalm 68:5, 146:9, Isaiah 1:17, 1:23, 10:2, Jeremiah 7:6, 22:3, Ezekiel 22:7, Malachi 3:5

[34] Zechariah 7:9-10 NIV

[35] Watkin, Christopher. Biblical Critical Theory (p. 262). Zondervan Academic. Kindle Edition.

[36] Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (2005 ), Loc 2088

[37] ibid

[38] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship (SCM Classics) (p. 33). Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd. Kindle Edition.

[39] Rabbi Lance J. Sussaman. The 13 Middot: God Is Ethical and So Are We (ReformJudaism.org) https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-commentary/13-middot-god-ethical-and-so-are-we

[40] Richard R. Melick Jr., “The Glory of God in the Synoptic Gospels, Acts, and the General Epistles,” in The Glory of God (Kindle Edition), (2010) Loc. 1875

[41] The Westminster Shorter Catechism online: http://www.reformed.org/documents/wsc/ (accessed 5 Jan 2017)

[42] Habakkuk 2:14 NIV

[43] John 15:8

[44] Romans 3:23 NIV

[45] Romans 5:2-4 NIV

[46] 1 Corinthians 10:31 NIV

[47] 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 NIV

[48] John 17:22 (NIV)

[49] Colossians 1:27 NIV