Come and study Holy Scriptures with us as Father Stephen DeYoung teaches verse by verse on the podcast, The Whole Council of God.

Father Stephen is a former Protestant pastor and Bible teacher in the Reformed Church,

but now an Orthodox priest serving at Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Then say Paul goes on in verse 9, for I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be

called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. So he doubles down. He says, look,

that's right, I'm the least of all of them, least of all of them. Not just less than the

11, not just less than the 70.

Put me at the bottom of the list, right, because of what he had done, that he had actively

been going and persecuting Christ in his church, had been imprisoning and killing Christians.

And so he would never place anything that he had preached to them on his own authority.

But by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace toward me was not in vain. But I labored more

abundantly than they all. Yet not I, but the grace of God, which was with me. Therefore, whether

it was I or they, so we preached and so you believed. So he says, listen,

I was doing evil. I was a murderer. I was a persecutor of Christ and his church. The only reason

St. Paul is who he is on that day, writing to them, that he's in the position he's in, that he

was there preaching to them and living with them,

that they're listening to anything he has to say is because of the grace of God,

meaning the action of God.

God came and made him an apostle.

That's why he is who he is.

Christ came and appeared to him rather forcefully, knocking him off that horse, right?

And called out to him and sent him.

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