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.

So we'll go ahead and get started.

When we get started here, in just a minute.

We'll be picking up Romans chapter 12 verse 1.

Catchup will be quicker this time,

because last time we ended at a major transition point in St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. As I mentioned way

back in the long ago time, the introduction to Romans and St. Paul's epistles in general,

he structures all of his epistles sort of in two major parts, and the transition between those two parts is usually marked by in English the word

therefore in the first part of his epistle he'll lay out theological groundwork do a lot of work

with the Old Testament sort of set out set the basis for what he has to say, then he'll say, therefore, and move into a

section of sort of more practical application of those things that he's just talked about.

And the therefore serves to, number one, mark that transition that now we're moving to a different

part, but also to connect

that second part to the first part. So the basis for the second part is the first part.

Would it be fair to say that he's probably chosen the theological themes in the first part

in light of what he tends to address.

Right, exactly, exactly, exactly. And so in this particular case of Romans, we've seen that in the

first part, he was talking about the relationship between Jewish believers and Gentile believers in the church, dealing with the issues

created by Claudius having expelled the Jews from Rome and now their return.

...