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 get started in St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians.

Chapter 1, verse 1.

Paul and Timothy bond servants of Jesus Christ

to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi

with the bishops and deacons

so we already mentioned

that this is coming from St. Paul and St. Timothy.

He has a co-author.

Bond servants is a fancy way of saying slaves.

That's really how Saints Paul and Timothy are describing themselves as being slaves of Christ.

They're writing to all the saints. Remember, that's to all the holy ones. We've talked before about how

that language of holy ones is what's applied in the Old Testament to the angels, right, to the angelic beings.

We've seen how, I think, every single one of St. Paul's epistles that we've read so far,

he begins with those identifications where when he's talking to the people, he reminds them of who

they are in Christ, and therefore who

they're called to be in Christ. So he uses this language of them being sons of God, which is language

applied to the angels in the Old Testament. He uses this language of holy ones, which is applied to

the angels in the Old Testament, all of which is to say, this is who you are in Christ, this is what you're called to

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