Ephesians 3:21

3:21 to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Matthew 16:18

16:18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades ¹  will not overpower it.

Acts 20:28

20:28 Watch out for ²  yourselves and for all the flock of which ³  the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, ⁴  to shepherd the church of God ⁵  that he obtained ⁶  with the blood of his own Son. ⁷ 

Acts 20:1

Paul Travels Through Macedonia and Greece

20:1 After the disturbance had ended, Paul sent for the disciples, and after encouraging ⁸  them and saying farewell, ⁹  he left to go to Macedonia. ¹⁰ 

Acts 3:15

3:15 You killed ¹¹  the Originator ¹²  of life, whom God raised ¹³  from the dead. To this fact we are witnesses! ¹⁴ 

Hebrews 12:22-24

12:22 But you have come to Mount Zion, the city ¹⁵  of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the assembly 12:23 and congregation of the firstborn, who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous, who have been made perfect, 12:24 and to Jesus, the mediator ¹⁶  of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks of something better than Abel’s does. ¹⁷ 

¹ tn Or “and the power of death” (taking the reference to the gates of Hades as a metonymy).

² tn Or “Be on your guard for” (cf. v. 29). Paul completed his responsibility to the Ephesians with this warning.

³ tn Grk “in which.”

⁴ tn Or “guardians.” BDAG 379-80 s.v. ἐπίσκοπος 2 states, “The term was taken over in Christian communities in ref. to one who served as overseer or supervisor, with special interest in guarding the apostolic tradition…Ac 20:28.” This functional term describes the role of the elders (see v. 17). They were to guard and shepherd the congregation.

⁵ tc The reading “of God” (τοῦ θεοῦ, tou qeou) is found in א B 614 1175 1505 al vg sy; other witnesses have “of the Lord” (τοῦ κυρίου, tou kuriou) here (so Ì⁷⁴ A C* D E Ψ 33 1739 al co), while the majority of the later minuscule mss conflate these two into “of the Lord and God” (τοῦ κυρίου καὶ [τοῦ] θεοῦ, tou kuriou kai [tou] qeou). Although the evidence is evenly balanced between the first two readings, τοῦ θεοῦ is decidedly superior on internal grounds. The final prepositional phrase of this verse, διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου (dia tou {aimato" tou idiou), could be rendered “through his own blood” or “through the blood of his own.” In the latter translation, the object that “own” modifies must be supplied (see tn below for discussion). But this would not be entirely clear to scribes; those who supposed that ἰδίου modified αἵματος would be prone to alter “God” to “Lord” to avoid the inference that God had blood. In a similar way, later scribes would be prone to conflate the two titles, thereby affirming the deity (with the construction τοῦ κυρίου καὶ θεοῦ following the Granville Sharp rule and referring to a single person [see ExSyn 272, 276-77, 290]) and substitutionary atonement of Christ. For these reasons, τοῦ θεοῦ best explains the rise of the other readings and should be considered authentic.

⁶ tn Or “acquired.”

⁷ tn Or “with his own blood”; Grk “with the blood of his own.” The genitive construction could be taken in two ways: (1) as an attributive genitive (second attributive position) meaning “his own blood”; or (2) as a possessive genitive, “with the blood of his own.” In this case the referent is the Son, and the referent has been specified in the translation for clarity. See further C. F. DeVine, “The Blood of God,” CBQ 9 (1947): 381-408.

⁸ tn Or “exhorting.”

⁹ tn Or “and taking leave of them.”

¹⁰ sn Macedonia was the Roman province of Macedonia in Greece.

¹¹ tn Or “You put to death.”

¹² tn Or “Founder,” “founding Leader.”

¹³ sn Whom God raised. God is the main actor here, as he testifies to Jesus and vindicates him.

¹⁴ tn Grk “whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses.” The two consecutive relative clauses make for awkward English style, so the second was begun as a new sentence with the words “to this fact” supplied in place of the Greek relative pronoun to make a complete sentence in English.

¹⁵ tn Grk “and the city”; the conjunction is omitted in translation since it seems to be functioning epexegetically – that is, explaining further what is meant by “Mount Zion.”

¹⁶ tn The Greek word μεσίτης (mesith", “mediator”) in this context does not imply that Jesus was a mediator in the contemporary sense of the word, i.e., he worked for compromise between opposing parties. Here the term describes his function as the one who was used by God to enact a new covenant which established a new relationship between God and his people, but entirely on God’s terms.

¹⁷ sn Abel’s shed blood cried out to the Lord for justice and judgment, but Jesus’ blood speaks of redemption and forgiveness, something better than Abel’s does (Gen 4:10; Heb 9:11-14; 11:4).