Do you remember the ALS ice bucket challenge of 2014? To promote awareness and raise money for ALS (that is, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is also called Lou Gehrig’s disease), millions of people took to social media and posted videos of themselves getting buckets of ice water dumped on them.
Celebrities, politicians and athletes took part. People made more and more elaborate videos documenting the challenge—many of which went viral. And the whole thing raised over $220 million for ALS research.
Here’s the thing, though: even though many, many people took part in the ice bucket challenge, only a fraction actually donated to the cause. It seems that the majority were more interested in being seen to be doing good, and thus being thought of as a good person, than actually doing good. We call this kind of behaviour “virtue signalling”, a way of demonstrating to others that you have good character without actually needing to change yourself.
As Christians, we want to be people of virtue who walk the walk as much as we talk the talk. But what is virtue? What are Christian virtues, as opposed to virtues that aren’t that Christian? Why is cultivating virtue important—important enough that the Centre for Christian Living has devoted an entire year to examining the subject? These are the sorts of things Karen Beilharz and Chase Kuhn discuss in this episode of the Centre for Christian Living podcast.
Links referred to:
- Our 2023 event program:
- “Is love really all you need?” with Dr Chase Kuhn (Wed 15 March)
- “The glory of humility” with Professor David VanDrunen (Wed 7 Jun, 5-6pm)
- “Virtue in an age of virtue signalling” with Professor David VanDrunen (Wed 7 Jun, 7:30-9:30pm)
- “Self-control in an age of self-actualisation” with Dr David Höhne (Wed 30 Aug, 7:30-9:30pm
- “The power and pain of perseverance” with Dr Mark Thompson (Wed 18 Oct, 7:30-9:30pm)
- Support the work of the Centre
Runtime: 32:41 min.
Transcript
Please note: This transcript has been edited for readability.
Introduction
Karen Beilharz: Do you remember the ALS ice bucket challenge of 2014? To promote awareness and raise money for ALS (that is, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is also called Lou Gehrig’s disease), millions of people took to social media and posted videos of themselves getting buckets of ice water dumped on them.
Celebrities, politicians and athletes took part. People made more and more elaborate videos documenting the challenge—many of which went viral. And the whole thing raised over $220 million for ALS research.
Here’s the thing, though: even though many, many people took part in the ice bucket challenge, only a fraction actually donated to the cause. It seems that the majority were more interested in being seen to be doing good, and thus being thought of as a good person, than actually doing good. We call this kind of behaviour “virtue signalling”, a way of demonstrating to others that you have good character without actually needing to change yourself.
As Christians, we want to be people of virtue who walk the walk as much as we talk the talk. But what is virtue? What are Christian virtues, as opposed to virtues that aren’t that Christian? Why is cultivating virtue important—important enough that the Centre for Christian Living has devoted an entire year to examining the subject? These are the sorts of things we’ll be discussing in this episode of the Centre for Christian Living podcast.
[Music]
KB: Hello and welcome to the Centre for Christian Living podcast. My name is Karen Beilharz and I’m the Executive Assistant at the Centre for Christian Living. I’m coming to you from Moore College in Sydney, Australia.
In this episode, Chase Kuhn is now in the interviewee chair and we’re going to have a conversation about virtue. Welcome, Chase!
Chase Kuhn: Thanks, Karen! It is strange to be interviewed on this podcast, rather than interviewing somebody else. But thank you very much. It’s nice to be here with you.
KB: [Laughter] But you have been interviewed before so you’re kind of used to it.
CK: I have in the past, you’re right. Yeah.
The definition of virtue
KB: Yeah. So the reason why we’re talking about this is because our event program this year is about virtue. How would you define virtue for the lay Christian?
CK: Yeah, virtue is really the excellence of character. That’s probably the simplest way to put it. It’s those internal qualities that we think about in who we are that obviously manifest themselves outwards in the way that we live. It’s the kinds of things that we think about like humility or godliness—those kinds of characteristics that are more internal to who we are that then express themselves in the way that we conduct ourselves.
Virtues vs vices
KB: So then how are virtues different from vices?
CK: Well, vices are the kinds of tendencies that we have inside us that lead us to sin. In other words, they’re the sinful dispositions—the ways that we act or the ways that we exist against the good things that God has given to us.
I won’t bore everyone with it today, but there’s a very long history about virtue and vice that goes back to Aristotle, in particular, and many people have built on Aristotle’s legacy, exploring what the virtues are. The opposites, then, are the things that are counter to the virtues, which are the vices.
Effectively, it’s how do you pursue a righteous, moral life—a good moral life—over against a bad or a wicked life? The vices, I think, are the kinds of wicked characteristics that we might see in us. If you’re going to take something like humility, the opposite of that would be something like pride. That would be a problem.
Of course, the difficulty with virtue and vice is that sometimes they look very similar. There is a kind of false humility that is also a form of pride. So you might think something looks humble, but it’s actually really proud. That’s where it gets really slippery and difficult for people.
KB: Yeah. Wow! [Laughter]
CK: Yeah, I know, I know! It’s all very confusing, I know. [Laughter] If I’m trying to help people out, really it’s about how do you develop the kind of character that is what God would desire of us as human beings? So when we think about the question as Christians—“What is the moral life?”—not just the kind of moral actions we would do, but the way of being that God were to ask of us—that’s what we’re after.
Virtue vs the fruit of the Spirit
KB: So is there a difference between the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23) and virtue?
CK: No, I think the fruit of the Spirit is a great way of encapsulating so many of the virtues. We talk about the work that the Spirit of God does in our lives to transform us, and when we talk about the fruit of the Spirit, it’s saying that, as we grow in the life that God has given us, we bear fruit. We can actually picture ourselves as trees. The kinds of fruit that will hang from us as trees, if you will, are the kinds of things that accord with the life God has given to us. So you have love, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control.
Some of those things we can associate with actions: they have a gentle action. But there is also that kind of gentle character. I think the life we are seeking to live in the Spirit is a life set against the flesh, which is much more closely associated with vices. That’s what I think Paul is calling us to in Galatians 5 as he talks about the fruit of the Spirit.
Christian virtues vs non-Christian virtues
KB: You’ve already named some of the virtues in the Bible in terms of the fruit of the Spirit. But are they the Christian virtues? What are the Christian virtues, and does that mean there are other virtues that are not Christian?
CK: Sure, yeah. This is, again, a very technical and very difficult question. [Laughter] There’s a long history of classical virtues. Especially within the Christian tradition, the Roman Catholic tradition has its own set of virtues, and identifies specific virtues as cardinal virtues and others that are more theological in nature.
Anyway, what we think about as “Christian” virtue, we have to see as what the Bible is informing us about the kind of character that God is asking us to have over against the kinds of things that, in classical philosophy, would be identified through reason about what is the best kind of character.
Now, there are some similarities there. When you think about something like humility, humility would be something that I think is very becoming of a Christian life. But how do you achieve humility is part of the question that, I think, lies at the centre of this.
As you think about classical virtue, many of them do find expression in the Christian faith. But for Christians, we say the Bible is our chief authority and therefore we let the Bible inform what we think about as these virtues. So when you gave me the list of the fruit of the Spirit, I think that’s a great way of categorising the virtues in the Christian life.
This year, we’re going to be looking at 2 Peter 1 and the verses that are there express to us the kind of character that we should be seeking as Christians. As we look at 2 Peter 1, you see a list that is not the classical virtue list. When Peter says to us,
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. (2 Pet 1:5–7)
—there is what you might call a virtue list. But it’s not the kind of virtue list that you would necessarily find in Aristotle or others who have tried to think about those classical virtues.
Secular virtue?
KB: You’ve mentioned other people who’ve come up with virtue lists like Aristotle. How did they come up with these? [Laughter]
CK: Yeah. Well, again, there’s a very long answer to that question. What they were trying to do as they reasoned about the life that we have was they were trying to think of the ways that we can identify moral good over against evil. That’s a question that all of us have in our lives: “How do I know what’s right and what’s wrong?” and “What is actually driving my life?”
For Aristotle, he had a particular end or goal in mind. He saw that there were highest orders, if you will, of the ways that things impact us in our existence. So for him, he sought something that he thought could be reached intellectually, as well as other things that could be reached morally, and he distinguished the moral and the intellectual life. But there were still virtues that were intellectual and there were virtues that were moral. He had this whole classification system of how he would organise life and what things we were pursuing, what was the kind of life you should actually move forward in. It’s a very complicated system. His Nicomachean Ethics is a great work to read, but it’s a bit sophisticated for a short podcast today.
KB: Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting that in the past, man has tried to—not invent, but formulate these things. But for us, we get them from the Bible—from God.
CK: Yes!
KB: It’s very different.
CK: Yeah. What I like about this is that we don’t want to say that all of the old philosophers are worthless or unhelpful. In fact, as you go through Christian history, you read people like Augustine or Aquinas, or even later, some folks of the Reformation, like Peter Martyr Vermigli, and they are actually commenting on what Aristotle did and incorporating this classical tradition into the way that they’re thinking about things theologically.
So they’re taking some of what is available in culture, recognising some good things and appropriating it, but always underneath the authority of the Scriptures so that the Scriptures are final and actually giving shape to the way that we embrace, take or leave things from culture.
Augustine was very big on virtue, as was Aquinas and some of the Reformers. So when Augustine is thinking about it, he’s thinking about the kinds of things in life that we should be pursuing, and the ways that we get there. But for him, it was never that we could achieve the virtuous life now; it was actually that the Christian life is about combating vices as much as it is anything else.
Right now, he saw that we have to do battle with the flesh, and we wait for the perfection that God brings to us at the new creation, where we will actually know a truly virtuous life.
Virtue then, virtue now
KB: Do you see a difference in what our society now would see as being virtuous, as opposed to Aristotle?
CK: Yeah, yeah. I’m sure that’s true. What kind of virtues do you think people have in society today?
KB: Being environmental [Laughter]—looking after the environment—
CK: Yeah, no doubt
KB: —and being respectful and kind to others, and not pushing your own values onto others.
CK: Yeah. There’s sort of a tolerance that, I think, is especially cherished today: you should be tolerant in a way that doesn’t impose on others but that just accepts other people. I also think the environmental concerns usually amount to action, but I guess that the virtue behind an environmentalism is a particular selflessness. The enemy of the environment is the consumer, who selfishly just takes and takes and takes, and does what they want. Whereas those who are more environmentally aware are thinking selflessly: “I will sacrifice something that I would have otherwise chosen, perhaps, for the good of more people,” and they see that as a selfless action—a humble action, maybe.
KB: Yeah, yeah.
Why bother
KB: I don’t know if I need to ask this question, but why is virtue important, and what would you say to people who think it’s something old-fashioned and we don’t need to bother with it anymore?
CK: Yeah. I think virtue can get a bad name. I think some people think that virtue is difficult to know, because it’s internal, not external—though, of course, virtue is always what tends to drive our actions.
Now, I should qualify that: it’s not always what drives our actions. When Jesus is engaging with the Pharisees, for example, you have people who are deeply committed to laws—real rules. But what they lack is the heart. So you can do the right thing, but have the wrong heart in doing it. Just because you tell the truth in a moment doesn’t mean you’re not deceptive or deceitful. Just because you do something kind doesn’t mean you’re actually a kind person. Just because you do something nice for your enemy doesn’t mean you don’t actually hate them. It’s different to do something kind and do it in love than it is just to do something kind and have hate in your heart.
When we think about what Jesus is teaching, especially in the Sermon on the Mount, he’s constantly trying to expose what lies beneath those actions. So even if you do all the right things, if you have this wickedness within you, there’s something fundamentally flawed within you.
Going all the way back to people like Augustine, who are reading the Scriptures and making sense of the world, Augustine believed that anything that is truly virtuous in us is always only ever a gift. I think that’s accurate of what the Scriptures teach us: we have new life by the gift of God. God’s grace comes to us. His Spirit brings us new life. So the new work that gets done within us is work that, of course, we must do in one sense, but it’s only ever by the power that God gives us: his grace. So in the end, what Augustine warns us of is that anything we think is virtuous in us is never virtuous because of what we’ve achieved. We are virtuous because God has been working in us to transform us to make us into the image of his Son Jesus.
So as Christians, the reason why we should care about virtue (for a very long answer to your very good question) is because God has graciously given us new life and he wants us to live in that new life—life that we have as a gift from him. I think virtue is expressing that life.
KB: So this series is like a continuation from last year’s series on “Commanding the heart” and Jesus’ exposure of our hearts. In a way, this year is concentrating on our hearts and the character of our hearts.
CK: Yes, absolutely! I teach my students all the time that we really need rules. We need laws. We look at some very difficult commands that Jesus gives us, even in the Sermon on the Mount. But every time we think about those commands, you’re right: our hearts are exposed. So if we want to actually do the right thing, it does matter what kind of people we are too who are doing those things.
Some people will talk about virtue being something that needs to be expressed in any and every context. If I am a humble person, I’m not just humble in circumstance A, but not humble in circumstance B. That’s actually a mask for something really deceptive, isn’t it. Humility is consistent. It’s not self-serving. So I can’t just humble when it’s advantageous to me but not when it’s not; I have to be humble full stop.
I’ve been thinking about this lately. Forgive me anyone who would be deeply offended by this, but the TV show Ted Lasso is a very fantastic TV show, even if vulgar in language and crude in its references. But the reason why people love it so much is because Ted is a very endearing character. The reason why Ted is so endearing, I think, is because Ted, I suspect, manifests the kinds of things that we would identify as virtuous: he’s humble, he’s loving, he’s gentle, he’s honest, he’s longsuffering. There are so many wonderful characteristics about Ted. You see Ted, in one sense, almost stoic: he’s unfazed by the drama around him in a way that just allows him to be sort of steady and consistent. Now, of course, if you’ve seen the show, you know that some of that gets pulled back and you see things crumbling. But in that way, there is this admirability about this kind of life that is really steady, and I guess that’s something we care about: we want to see faithfulness in us and faithfulness that gets shown through in every context that we’re in.
KB: Yes, so that we are the same person always. You don’t change according to our circumstances.
CK: Yeah! I’m the same person at home as I am at work. I’m the same person at church as I am in the supermarket. All the time we are the same people. What we want to be, of course, as Christians is who we are—that is, we’re Jesus’ people.
KB: And we are to be like Christ as well.
CK: To be like him—ambassadors for him. That’s right.
[Music]
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CK: As we take a break from our program, I’d really like to invite you to our first live event of 2023. It will be on 15 March here at Moore College and I’ll be speaking on the virtue of love. We’re going to be asking the question, “Is love really all you need?”
Of course, The Beatles had a famous song that had a message to the world that “Love is all you need”. Certainly in Scripture, the virtue of love is regarded as supreme, as we see in 1 Corinthians 13:13. In fact, in the Bible, love is a catch-all term for morality, summarising the law.
But with the mainstream use of slogans like “Love is love” bandied around in this day and age, what does the concept of love even mean anymore? How do we know what love is? What does it look like? Furthermore, is love really all we need?
Please come and join us as I speak about love and how following Christ leads us into a truly loving existence. You can register on our website at ccl.moore.edu.au.
I’ll just remind you: this year, all of our events are by donation only. We’d love for you to come. If you can’t afford to pay anything, you can come for free. You can come with your church, come in person, come online—whatever you can do—and if you’re able to help, we’d be really grateful for you to donate.
Now let’s get back to our program.
What we do vs who we are
KB: We’ve talked a little bit about this, but is there a distinction between what we do and who we are when it comes to virtue?
CK: I suspect so. Again, to be an honest person is more than just telling the truth sometimes. Honesty is going to manifest itself more than just in our words. It’s going to come through in our actions. It’s going to be a real representation of yourself always. That’s honest. I think the more we can see that the kind of people we are has to align with the kind of actions we want to do—and vice versa: the kinds of actions we do have to align with the kind of heart we have. It’s really important.
Jesus draws this out as well: he says, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt 12:34). So the kind of person you are is going to come out in your words and the ways that you interact with other people.
You can mask that for so long—you can tiptoe around—but when the heat of the moment sets in on you, your true colours will be known. I guess that’s where the heart matters so much, even with our actions.
KB: Yeah.
Why these virtues?
KB: So looking at our event program, we’re looking at love, humility, virtue, self-control and perseverance. Why focus on these virtues?
CK: I really wanted to try and anchor the program in a biblical text. Looking at 2 Peter 1, you get this list. It’s one of a number of lists in the New Testament that lists virtues or things that resemble virtue, at least—characteristics that would be internal to us. I thought this was a great way to do it. We are charged here to seek after these things. Peter says, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith” (2 Pet 1:5).
Now, we have faith. We’re saved by faith: that’s what Peter says earlier on in 2 Peter 1. But now that we are people of faith, that faith gets supplemented with a particular kind of character. We grow into that character. I think it’s the same thing that Paul talks about in terms of fruit of the Spirit. I think it’s what Paul talks about elsewhere too—about the putting off and putting on language. Here, Peter is encouraging us to make every effort we can to have this kind of character.
So I tried to go through these. To be honest with you, initially I was trying to identify as many that closely aligned with classical virtues. I thought, “If we’re going to do a series on virtue, let’s try to get some that really align with classical virtues.” So self-control aligns with temperance. Or perseverance aligns with longsuffering, and so on. You could have done something with prudence or whatever, but I tried to zero in on as many as I could.
Virtue is the strange one, because Peter encourages us to make every effort to supplement our faith with virtue, and he identifies virtue as one of the virtues, if you will—one of the excellencies. So with that one, in particular, I thought, “Well, we really ought to focus in on this thing, not just as a meta theme, but as something that we need to have too: actual virtue amongst other virtues. So that’s why we did that one.
Love: Chief among the virtues
CK: Love is the one I’m tackling: I’m starting off this series on love, and I personally think this is maybe chief amongst the virtues for Christians.
KB: Like in 1 Corinthians 13: “the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13).
CK: Yeah, that’s right! Faith, love and hope is that triad that’s been around for so long. “The greatest of these is love” because love remains. I think love is a word that gets used in the New Testament, in one sense, to summarise all of the law: so every kind of way that we would act towards God and towards our neighbour could be summarised in love. That’s what we’re called to do. But I actually think that all of the virtues, in one sense, could be under that umbrella as well—that humility or self-control or even perseverance—all of these things can be summarised under the umbrella of love.
Now, love is not all these things. But love could serve, in one sense, a shorthand for all these things. But in some ways, love would be incomplete without them. So I want to work my way through those and hold them together, if you will: how can love be, in one sense, chief, but also not everything? You can’t have anything else without love, but love also will only be known properly when it has these other things.
KB: Wow, that sounds big! [Laughter]
CK: Well, yeah, it does! Let me give you a little taster: if I say that I have love, but I don’t show that love with self-control, how can I actually show a real love—a good love? It would be unrestrained. Now, some people would applaud that. They would say, “You should just love fiercely.” But loving fiercely is going to take me in a million different directions that are going to be unloving towards the people I really love the most. So love that’s not controlled, focused or tempered in some way is going to be very unloving. Self-control is not love, but I don’t really have true love if I don’t have self-control. That’s the thing I want to look at.
What is love?
KB: That leads me to the question of what are you specifically looking at? What kind of love are you looking at? I’m thinking of CS Lewis’s book, The Four Loves: is he wrong about to talk about love that way? Is that the approach you’re taking, or is it different?
CK: The work by CS Lewis on The Four Loves is a classic. I really enjoyed reading it when I was at university a long time ago. I think what Lewis was trying to do was he was trying to show that love is not is not love is not love. [Laughter] We use the same word “love” for a whole range of words that get used in the New Testament in particular to try to encapsulate an idea. We want to think about love, and we even want to think about the ordering of loves and what love is most becoming of Christians. I think the variety of ways we can think about love is maybe illustrated best if we just talk about the objects of our love.
So I love ice cream. I love my son and my daughters. I love my work. I love my wife. I can talk about each of these things very differently. The kind of love that I have my children, in one sense, resembles the love I have for my wife. But it’s not the same. I love my wife in a way that I love my children, but I love her in a way that’s also different and more. I love my family in a way that’s completely unlike my love for ice cream. There are ways that we can talk about love differently, but we have this single word. Lewis was trying to tap into that.
I guess when we ask the question, “Is love really all you need?”, my wife said to me when I told her about the event, “Immediately what I thought is ‘Love is love’”—this slogan and catchphrase that’s been going around. In other words, “Let love be what it is.” I don’t think that’s very helpful. I don’t think love is everything, and I don’t think love is whatever we want it to be. I think there’s something more to it. The kind of love we’re going to be thinking about at the event is less the kind of love that gets expressed, if you will, as an action in sexuality or something else, but it’s actually the kind of character that we have towards God and each other. How do I love God and how do I love my neighbour? That definitely gets manifested in actions, but there’s something about the way that I even feel towards people—that I even have in my being about people—that needs to be transformed into this way. I want to explore what it means for us to be honouring God as people with the kind of love that we grow into.
So when I say, “I love my enemy,” well, that might be certain kinds of actions that I have towards my enemy, but what does it mean for me to actually love them in the recesses my heart? [Blows out a big breath] That requires a very powerful divine intervention and something that I think we need to seek prayerfully.
KB: Yep, definitely. [Laughter]
CK: Yeah, it’s very difficult.
Cultivating virtue
KB: What’s one thing that Christians listening can work on this week to cultivate virtue or even the virtue of love in their lives?
CK: Yeah. I think that the best way we can cultivate virtue is to ask the Lord to transform our hearts and our minds. You can look at something like Romans 12: if you go to Romans 12 this week, look through that in your Bible, read verses 1-2, which talks about offering yourselves as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, as your spiritual act of worship, and notice how God undoes the effects of sin in your life. Because God works in your heart and your mind to bring you new life by his Spirit, all the old ways of relating—the kinds of things that you would see, say, in Romans 1:18-32, those kinds of nasty ways of relating get undone when God’s Spirit gives us new life so that we get transformed as the kind of people we are and the ways that we relate. Now, the actions will, in one sense, issue forth from them: they will come out of a heart and a mind that’s been transformed. So pray to the Lord, “Transform my heart and my mind,” and do that as you read the Scriptures.
What I’ve tried to make a practice of, and have done better at it in certain seasons of my life than others, is even when I’m reading the Scriptures and I’m captivated by something I’m seeing, I try to slow down. I’ll take a verse and I’ll pray to the Lord. For example, if we take 2 Peter 1:5—“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue”—I would pray to the Lord,
Father, I’m grateful for the faith you’ve given me. Now I’m praying give me the will to see the transformation you’ve given to me throughout my whole life—every area. I want to honour you with all of my thoughts, with all my words and my deeds. I know that that will only happen as my heart is changed.
Then pray through the virtue lists. You can go back to the verses before as well: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Pet 1:3):
I know, Lord, that anything good that’s going to come into my life. All of my godliness is owing to your divine power. You’ve given it to me. So please now in that power, work this new life through me. Help me to really honour you and bring glory to you.
KB: Fantastic!
The last word on virtue
KB: Is there anything else you would like to say about virtue before we conclude our conversation?
CK: Well, I just think it’s something we need to care about, and I hope people will come along to our events so that they can hear. Love. Humility. Virtue: we’re going to talk about virtue amongst virtue signalling. What’s the difference between doing something to try to signal a particular kind of virtue and having virtue deep within our hearts? What does it mean to have self-control and what does it mean to persevere? There’s a great line-up this year and I’m really hopeful that people will come along—not just because of intellectual interest, but because they deeply desire to honour the Lord with their lives.
KB: Thank you, Chase!
CK: Thanks, Karen!
Conclusion
CK: To benefit from more resources from the Centre for Christian Living, please visit ccl.moore.edu.au, where you’ll find a host of resources, including past podcast episodes, videos from our live events and articles published through the Centre. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast and for you to leave us a review so more people can discover our resources.
On our website, we also have an opportunity for you to make a tax deductible donation to support the ongoing work of the Centre.
We always benefit from receiving questions and feedback from our listeners, so if you’d like to get in touch, you can email us at ccl@moore.edu.au.
As always, I would like to thank Moore College for its support of the Centre for Christian Living, and to thank to my assistant, Karen Beilharz, for her work in editing and transcribing the episodes. The music for our podcast was generously provided by James West.
[Music]
Except as otherwise noted, Bible quotations are from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by International Bible Society, www.ibs.org. All rights reserved worldwide.
