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 now we have a little bit of a transition at the beginning of chapter 9.

St. Paul is sort of moving to a new topic that he introduces here.

He says, I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscious also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit.

That I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart.

So he invokes two witnesses.

He's got his conscience, he's got the Holy Spirit bearing witnesses, and this is true.

That he has this grief and sorrow in his heart.

For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my countrymen, according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises, of whom are the fathers,

and from whom according to the flesh Christ came, who is overall the eternally blessed God. Amen.

So this is one of the examples, the Father's tells us, the other one being, who says something similar, of the purest love that a human being can have.

And that's that St. Paul says he would be willing to face eternal condemnation and be cut off from Christ if it meant that his fellow ethnic Jews,

his fellow Judeans, could find salvation in Christ,

who have cut themselves off.

Moses at one point says the same thing about the people of Israel when God is angry at them.

He says, asks that he himself be blotted out of God's book of life, but that God not

destroy them.

Is it clear to Paul that very few Israelites are following Christ?

At this point, yes.

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