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 chapter 14, verse one, receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things.

So we all are at different stages in the Christian life.

We're all, regardless of our physical age, we also have sort of a spiritual maturity level.

There are some people who are very advanced in age who are not very advanced.

There are some people who are very young in age who are very advanced spiritually.

So these are disassociated.

And so St. Paul here is referring to someone who's weak in this case is someone who is

immature spiritually.

Okay.

And he's saying you need to receive that kind of person, right?

You don't push that person off because they don't understand and they don't, you know, aren't necessarily on board with everything you're doing or they ask too many questions or whatever.

He says, but, but what you do not do with that person is engage in disputes over doubtful things.

You don't receive them so that they can argue about everything. That's not the purpose. The purpose of receiving them is so that

hopefully they can begin to grow toward greater maturity and understanding.

I notice in reading reading fathers or

ascetics or whatever

is that theological

disputes play very little

role in any way right

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