What I am saying with this boastful confidence I do not say the way the Lord would. Instead it is, as it were, foolishness.

And I know that his commandment is eternal life. Thus the things I say, I say just as the Father has told me.”

Am I saying these things only on the basis of common sense, or does the law not say this as well?

I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you,

Sober up as you should, and stop sinning! For some have no knowledge of God – I say this to your shame!

For this reason I speak to them in parables: Although they see they do not see, and although they hear they do not hear nor do they understand.

If anyone wants to do God’s will, he will know about my teaching, whether it is from God or whether I speak from my own authority.

So they said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus replied, “What I have told you from the beginning.

I am telling you the things I have seen while with the Father; as for you, practice the things you have heard from the Father!”

But now I am coming to you, and I am saying these things in the world, so they may experience my joy completed in themselves.

Or do you not know, brothers and sisters (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law is lord over a person as long as he lives?

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

Are they servants of Christ? (I am talking like I am out of my mind!) I am even more so: with much greater labors, with far more imprisonments, with more severe beatings, facing death many times.

I have many things to say and to judge about you, but the Father who sent me is truthful, and the things I have heard from him I speak to the world.”

Then Jesus said, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and I do nothing on my own initiative, but I speak just what the Father taught me.

For the king knows about these things, and I am speaking freely to him, because I cannot believe that any of these things has escaped his notice, for this was not done in a corner.

Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father residing in me performs his miraculous deeds.