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.

And it's not just, it's not just to answer one of the criticisms from the other side.

It's not just God has made it possible for you to be saved and now you go do it yourself.

Because we're still talking about grace here.

We're still talking about God's action.

God is ready.

You can't become righteous or become

holy on your own right but you can choose to cooperate with God in you becoming holy we become as

St. Paul says in 1st Corinthians 5 9 we become God's co- Right. God is working in the world to save it, transform it.

Christ is making all things new, as he says in the book of Revelation.

He's transforming and transfiguring the whole world.

We can cooperate with what he's doing and be a part of it.

And in so doing, we're also transformed and made new.

Or we can not cooperate and fight against it and resist it.

Right.

And then we end up destroying ourselves.

But yeah, that's what St. Paul is teaching here.

There's nothing here about guilt or some kind of criminal trial, right, where you're guilty of this and now you're going to be punished.

There's a thing about punishment.

You've got to import those ideas.

...