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.

We'll go ahead and start with in St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians,

chapter 1, verse 1.

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God,

to the saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus.

So I already mentioned about the in Ephesus.

And it's also worth noting. One more footnote on that. If you go look up with the church fathers, if you look at their

commentaries on Ephesus, when they comment on this verse, a lot of them leave out the

in Ephesus. They at least don't comment on it. I don't know if that's because they didn't

have it in their copy yet, or if they knew it was some kind of heading, right? And they never,

they don't really say anything about, about Ephesus in this.

They just talk about, they say, well, St. Paul identifies the recipients as the saints,

as the holy ones, as being faithful, holy ones, and as being faithful in Christ Jesus.

So we've talked a lot in St. Paul's epistles that we've already been through about his apostleship, right?

So he's saying he's one sent by Jesus Christ, by the will of God, God there being God

the Father.

Right? And so there's this order, right?

God the Father, Christ, Christ has sent St. Paul.

And so he's writing with that authority.

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