to put something of your own on open display through what you do: to show your power, your character, or your attitude by acting on it
Greek has a plainer verb for showing (δεικνύω), which can point at an object or let someone have a look at something. This word is narrower and more personal. What gets shown always belongs to the one showing it: his power, her loyalty, their gentleness, his hostility. And it is shown by doing rather than by saying. You cannot use this word for handing someone a map. You use it for a person whose conduct makes plain what they are really like.
The New Testament divides its eleven uses almost evenly between God and people, and the two feel quite different in English even though the word does not change.
- With God or Christ as the one acting, the word carries the weight of a purpose: Pharaoh was raised up so that God's power would be put on display, and the church exists so that the coming ages will see the overwhelming riches of his kindness.
- With people as the ones acting, the word turns practical: prove your love where the churches can see it, show every kind of good faith at work, be gentle toward everyone, keep up the same eagerness right to the end.
The odd use is in 2 Timothy 4:14, where the thing displayed is not a virtue but harm. Alexander the coppersmith "showed" Paul many evils, which English versions sensibly render "did me great harm." This is a set expression that already appears in the Greek Old Testament, and it works the same way as the rest: hostility, like kindness, is something a person puts on display by acting on it.
Where a related verb (φανερόω) is about uncovering something that had been hidden, this one takes for granted that the quality is already there and asks only whether it can be seen. That is why it suits both a God who acts in history and a congregation asked to make its love visible.