Religion of the Apostles Quotes

“Through His death and Resurrection, Christ has restored human nature in its function as the image of God. This restoration brings about the descent of the Holy Spirit, which fills human persons in whom the image of God has been restored through baptism into Christ. It is in this way, the Holy Spirit coming to indwell the Christian, that human persons are empowered to serve as God’s image in His creation. It is through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that human persons come to participate in the working of God in the world, to do the works that He has prepared in advance for them to do (Eph. 2:10). These are God’s own works, and so God can look on them and declare them to be good. In its turn, serving as God’s image by participation brings about growth into God’s likeness (Phil. 2:12–13). It is transformative of human persons, both restoring and healing them from the effects of sin, and ever more conforming them to the likeness of Jesus Christ.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). The Person who appeared to Abraham, Jacob, and Moses is the same One who lived and ate with the apostles. The One who gave Moses the teaching of the Torah also explained it to His disciples and fulfilled it in His life and work. Therefore, there are not pieces of the Torah that are applicable to Christians and others that are now irrelevant. There are not portions of the Holy Scriptures that are now to be ignored. The exact opposite is true. Through Christ, in the life of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, the commandments of the Torah can finally be fully lived out. The life of Christians in the Orthodox Church continues the way of life of the apostles and the earliest Christian communities. Even more, it continues the way of life that God established for His people from the very beginning.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“In the Eucharist, humanity offers to God the fruit of its labors, bread and wine, in fulfillment of the offerings of firstfruits, of grain offerings and drink offerings. This is in specific imitation of the offering of Melchizedek (Gen. 14:18), after whose priesthood Christ’s is patterned (Ps. 110/109:4; Heb. 7:13–17). With these gifts, the people offer themselves, their labors, their whole life, and their collective being as a community unto God. In return, Christ offers Himself. In fulfilling the atoning sacrifices, Christ has once and for all cleansed His people of sin and its effects on the created order by offering Himself, His labors, and His whole life as a pleasing sacrifice to the Father. Therefore, no further sacrifices are required to this end (Heb. 10:10–18). Rather, in the eating of Christ’s body and the drinking of His blood, we come to participate ever more fully in that once-and-for-all sacrifice and to receive in ourselves as human persons the effects of that sacrifice, namely purification from sin and the life of God Himself.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“The same language is applied both to animal offerings and to grain offerings in the Old Testament, not to mention to the sacrifice of Christ in the New Testament (Eph. 5:2). Bearing this in mind, the conventional Protestant understanding of the Eucharist as a meal, not a sacrifice, is incoherent from the point of view of the apostles. Sacrifices from their perspective were communal meals, leading to the very early crisis regarding meat offered to idols (as dealt with primarily by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians).”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Because in Western Christian circles worship is largely regarded as a matter of personal taste, Orthodox worship—indeed, traditional Christian worship—tends to be understood as just one of many preferences for how to worship. “Smells and bells,” as it were. It is assumed to be some form of Greek, Russian, Middle Eastern, or other arcane cultural expression of Christian worship. This, however, is far from the truth. The patterns, and even details, of Orthodox worship are based on a consistent interpretation of God’s commandments in the Torah, now grasped more fully and deeply in Christ. New Testament worship did not start over with a clean slate after abandoning the worship of the Old Testament. The apostles applied the commandments of the Torah regarding worship to the Christian communities they founded. This apostolic worship is continued in the liturgical life of the Orthodox Church. This is the worship that God has given to humanity to allow them to make a pleasing offering to the Father, united to the Son, in the communion of the Holy Spirit.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Christ does not abolish the commandments regarding worship but fulfills them in bringing the full knowledge of God, which transforms and deepens them in a new context. We see this borne out in the practice of the apostles, who did not reject the existing Second Temple worship, which still existed in their times. Quite to the contrary, not only St. James but also St. Paul were willing and eager to participate in the taking of a Nazirite vow, complete with sacrificial offerings at the temple (Acts 21:23–26). Saint Paul did not shun synagogues but rather went to them first in all his missionary journeys, participated in their worship, and preached Jesus there as the Christ, the fulfillment of the Scriptures, which were read and taught there.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Excommunication from the Church community, the remedy for unrepentant sin throughout the New Testament, is the direct equivalent of exile from the Old Covenant community (see Matt. 18:17; 2 Thess. 3:6; 1 Tim. 1:20). In addition to being expelled from the place where Christ dwells, one is excluded from eating from the Tree of Life, as fulfilled in the Eucharist, the ongoing source of life in the Kingdom (John 6:53–57). Far from being a “watering down” of the juridical penalties of the Law, excommunication from the Church community, as taught by the apostles and practiced by the Church through the centuries, is a direct application of the principles, and the penalties, of the Torah understood in their deepest sense. The life given by Christ, eternal life, is “real” life. Biological life is an image or a shadow of that reality. Basic to Christianity is the understanding that biological life in this world is not all that there is.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“The Torah is not merely a means of governance for Israel; it represents the expression of what is required of Israel now that God dwells among them, which by necessity entails the means of restoring right relationship between God and man when it has been disrupted. Numbers 15 explicitly ties the cutting off of a person from the community to their lack of repentance in addition to the nature of their sin. When sin enters the community through a person, this can be remedied either by the repentance of the person or by the removal of that person from the community.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“In our modern era, so much of our discussion has concerned the historicity of the various narratives in this book that we are prone to lose sight of its place in the Torah. In its canonical form, Genesis is not an independent entity but rather serves as the historical and theological prologue to the Torah as a whole. The major themes of the law are, therefore, to be found initially in Genesis. Genesis must shape the understanding of the events and teachings related in the texts of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Christ’s atoning sacrifice not only triumphs over the web of the world’s sin; it also purifies the physical world from the uncleanness that has resulted from it. While atoning for the sanctuary allowed God to dwell there, Christ’s atonement allows the Holy Spirit to come to dwell in the entire world, and in all the world’s people,”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Just before he was invited to the home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion and God-fearer, St. Peter received a vision in which he is commanded to kill and eat a variety of unclean species. He protests that these are unclean animals. The response from heaven is that he must “not call unclean what [God] has made clean.” The thrust of this passage is to communicate to St. Peter that the Gentiles are no longer unclean and that he can go into Cornelius’s home. Further, the apostles, in general, can travel and preach the gospel to the nations without concern of becoming unclean through contact with their people. For this imagery to effectively communicate the message, however, the underlying principle—that God has now made these animals and the Gentiles clean—must be true. What is changed here is not the status of the commandments, but the formerly unclean status of the Gentiles and animals.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Far from proclaiming that the Law no longer applies to Christians, the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 directly, strictly, and literally applies the Torah to the life of the Christian Church. The Law is not here rejected, but established. The dispute it resolved was not between a pro-Torah and an anti-Torah party but instead concerned how the Torah should be interpreted, understood, and applied in light of the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“A close reading of Leviticus reveals that the apostles were doing the exact opposite of saying that the Torah doesn’t apply to Christians. Rather, they were proclaiming that a very literal reading of the Torah will be the basis for the structure of the life of the Church community just as it was the basis for the formation of the nation of Israel. The Gentiles who come to worship Christ do not become Jewish by virtue of coming to dwell in Israel. They remain Greeks or Romans or Egyptians or Syrians. But in order to be a member of the community of God’s people and not draw the wrath of God down on the community, they must refrain from all idolatry and sexual immorality”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“At the beginning of God’s creative activity, the earth is formless and empty. In three days, He sets the earth in order by dividing the light from darkness, sky from sea, and sea from dry land. In three days, He fills the heavens with lights, the skies and seas with life, and finally the dry land with life. God is then enthroned in the temple that He has constructed and reigns from His rest. The observance of the Sabbath at the end of the week was then, for Israel, participation in the rest and reign of her God Yahweh and an anticipation of the rest that awaited her people at the end.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“in keeping with Christ’s statement in Matthew 5, every commandment of the Torah is done, taught, and continues to live in the life of the Orthodox Church. All the commandments—both as a united whole and in their particulars—continue to be relevant and applicable. They apply in a deeper, fuller sense because of what Christ accomplished in the gospel. Fulfillment is here seen as a lens through which the commandments are read rather than a veil, as now, knowing Christ, one can understand the real meaning, force, and life-giving power of the commandments.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Just as the Law in its entirety is not compartmentalized into categories, the Ten Commandments—a kind of microcosm of the Law—is not subdivided, not even between the first four (which initially seem focused on the proper worship of God) and the final six (which seem more concerned with the proper functioning of human relationships). Idolatry is treated everywhere in Scripture as a moral offense, not a ceremonial one. The statements of moral offense in the Law are almost always accompanied by civil penalties that result from the violation of these commandments or ceremonial prescriptions for expunging the offense, or both. A typical commandment format might be, “If a man commits manslaughter, he shall be put to death unless he offers a ram and a young lamb as a sin offering.” This is a simple example to show how a single commandment could fall into all three of the categorizations Calvin and others have proposed. Christ never taught only one-third of these commandments were to be done and taught. But even if He had, it would be difficult to identify the strictly moral laws in the Torah with certainty, given that so many of them overlap in the complex web of human life on earth.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Ritual is then not done away with but is transformed and brought to a new fullness in Christ. The New Testament narrative of Christ’s atoning work is enacted, made real, and participated in by members of the Church as community through ritual. This participation produces repentance, which brings about forgiveness, cleansing, and the healing of sin.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Within most ancient cultures, the lines between religious ritual and ritual magic are more or less blurred. In Israelite ritual, however, ritual was aimed not at bringing about a change in deity or making God perform certain actions on the community’s behalf. Nor was ritual viewed as grounded primarily even in the repairing of the relationship between God and the community, though this was a secondary effect. Ritual was aimed at the transformation of human life as persons and as a community.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“In the contemporary Western world, we think of sin in juridical terms and so look at God’s curse as punishment. We associate God’s curse brought about by wickedness with a person’s eternal destiny after death. Israelite religion, as well as that of the Second Temple period and early Christianity, however, had rather what might be called a “biological” view of sin. Sin is an infection. Things tainted by sin are treated in the same manner and according to the same purity regulations as those tainted by disease or mildew. Sin and the curse that it brings can be communicated from person to person and infects areas and objects and even the land. It not only must be forgiven as a transgression, but it also requires purification.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Paradise is the place where Yahweh dwells, and so the place where Yahweh dwells becomes Paradise, and streams of living water flow from Him (Jer. 2:13; 7:13). It is for this reason that the Theotokos herself is poetically described as a “mystical Paradise,” because Yahweh, the God of Israel, came to dwell within her womb.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Humanity was not created to, at that time, simply passively dwell with God forever in His Presence. Rather, humanity was created to, as God’s image, spread Eden out into the world and make the whole world a Paradise in which God dwelt. Once this work was completed, then humankind would dwell with God and His heavenly hosts forever.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Here we see the inversion of the pagan view that God desires humans to fulfill some need on His part, which He will reward with blessings. Rather, God desires that human persons share in His life by participating in His working in the world, that they become righteous by participating in His righteousness, good by participating in His goodness, holy by participating in His holiness, and so on. He desires that they function as His image.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Through His death and Resurrection, Christ has restored human nature in its function as the image of God. This restoration brings about the descent of the Holy Spirit, which fills human persons in whom the image of God has been restored through baptism into Christ. It is in this way, the Holy Spirit coming to indwell the Christian, that human persons are empowered to serve as God’s image in His creation.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“In its turn, serving as God’s image by participation brings about growth into God’s likeness (Phil. 2:12–13). It is transformative of human persons, both restoring and healing them from the effects of sin, and ever more conforming them to the likeness of Jesus Christ.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“The tabernacle and the temple, then, were constructed as images of Paradise in particular, and the entire creation of which it is a microcosm. The structures, the iconography, and the worship of the tabernacle and temple were built around telling this story of the enthronement of Yahweh over all creation.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Throughout the history of the Church, there have been attempts to disfigure the identity of Christ by detaching the Christ whom we encounter in the Gospels from the God of the Old Testament. The first known and perhaps most infamous attempt was made by Marcion, who argued at the beginning of the second century that Yahweh was a different God than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, describing the former as violent and wrathful while the latter is loving and compassionate. Views of this sort are most often debunked by demonstrating the love and compassion of Yahweh in the Old Testament. The commands to love God and neighbor are drawn from the Torah, specifically Leviticus and Deuteronomy. His mercy and compassion are continual themes in the Psalms. It can, however, be equally refuted in the opposite direction. The Christ who walked in the Garden and cursed the serpent, who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, who led the people out of Egypt and commanded Joshua’s armies is the same Christ whom we encounter in the four Gospels. The Christ of love and compassion and mercy whom we encounter in the Gospels and the teaching of the apostles that make up the rest of the New Testament is the same Christ whom we encounter in the judgment of Revelation as the avenger of innocent blood.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Throughout the history of the Church, there have been attempts to disfigure the identity of Christ by detaching the Christ whom we encounter in the Gospels from the God of the Old Testament. The first known and perhaps most infamous attempt was made by Marcion, who argued at the beginning of the second century that Yahweh was a different God than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, describing the former as violent and wrathful while the latter is loving and compassionate.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“Christianity did not bring in foreign elements, pagan or otherwise, to Judaism in order to create a new religion. Rather, Rabbinic Judaism cut off huge swathes of the belief and practice of the Second Temple period in order to create a deliberately non-Christian religion that relied on a pared-down reading of the Hebrew Scriptures.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“He raised our shared human nature with Himself, such that our humanity now sits enthroned in the heavens in His person.”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century

“the pouring out of the Holy Spirit is the glorification of humanity, and this includes not only the soul but the physical body (Rom. 8:17, 30). Saint Paul never questions but always affirms the physical, bodily resurrection. The transfiguring Presence of God Himself, however, transforms the human body from an earthen one to a celestial one as the angels possess. But”
― Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century