Saints and Sinners – 15th February 2017

“…having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.”(Colossians 2:14).

All human beings are sinners because we are born in sin. But although many would like to portray themselves as saints, not all humans are saints. According to the Bible, a saint is not someone who has done wonderful things, nor is it someone who has been deemed a saint by a church or organization. The word translated “saint” in the New Testament, hagios, literally means “sacred, physically pure; morally blameless or religious; ceremonially consecrated; holy.” In the context of New Testament passages, saints are those who belong to the body of Christ, saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ as ones saviour. We can learn this from Ephesians 2:8–9, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.” In other words, saint is another word for a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There are many definitions of what a Saint is. For example, a Saint is an example of holiness that we can follow with confidence, or a saint is always someone through whose life we learn what God is like - and of what we are called to be. The Greek word for saints is an interesting one. It is the word “hagios” and means “most holy thing” so a saint is a holy person but wait…, aren’t all men are called sinners, even after they are saved? The deference is that God sees the repented and saved individual as having Jesus own righteousness because Christ became sin for us so that when the Father now sees us, He sees us as having the righteousness of Jesus Christ as we read from 2 Corinthians 5:21,“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

What about those who are saved or justified by faith in the Old Testament? Does God consider them saints too? The Hebrew word used in the Old Testament for saint is “chaciyd” which means “faithful, kind, godly,” and “holy one” so we see that the use of the word saint essentially means the same thing in both the Old and New Testament and that is “holy ones.” There is yet another Hebrew word for saint and it is “qadowsh” which again means “sacred, holy, holy one” and “set apart.”

When believers are called and saved we are sanctified or “set apart for holy use” which is what sanctified means. So the Bible mentions believers in both the Old and New Testament as saints. Here’s proof that we can read from Ephesians 1:1 “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus.”Here we can learn that those who were faithful in Christ were also referred to as saints. The apostle Paul calls the believers at Ephesus “saints” because in Christ they are made holy due to Jesus’ atoning sacrifice. But there’s more. Once again Paul, as is his custom, opens his epistles (letters) with greetings to the saints or the set apart or holy ones. They have no inherent holiness of course but they are made holy by Jesus’ blood that was shed for them on the cross. We can `get proof again from Colossians 1:2 “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father.”

It is a clear biblical truth that all are born in sin and all have a sin nature. Scripture says that God created humankind originally good and without a sin nature. We can learn this from Genesis 1:26–27: " Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that

move along the ground.” 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” However, Genesis 3 records the fall of Adam and Eve, and with that fall sin entered into the two previously sinless creatures. And when they had children, their sin nature was passed along to their offspring. Further to this we keep adding on to the sin equation through our sinful actions. Thus, we are born in sin and keep adding to the misery and therefore every human being in Gods eyes is a sinner until he or she is redeemed through their faith in Jesus Christ as one’s saviour.

Saints, on the other hand, are NOT born saints; they become saints by being reborn. Because the bible tells us: “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”(Romans 3:23). Therefore, we are all in need of spiritual rebirth, without which we will continue in our sinful state throughout eternity. But God, in His great mercy and grace, has provided the (only) means for turning a sinner into a saint—the Lord Jesus Christ, who came “to give His life as a ransom for many” as we can learn from Mark 10:45 “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”When we confess our need for a Savior from sin and accept His sacrifice on the cross on our behalf, we become saints.

There is no hierarchy of saints. All who belong to Christ by faith are saints, and none of us are more “saintly” than our Christian brothers and sisters. The apostle Paul, who is no more of a saint than the most obscure Christian, begins his first letter to the Corinthian church by declaring: “To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours:” (1 Corinthians 1:2). In this verse, hagios is translated “saints,” “holy,” and “sanctified” in different Bible versions, leading to the unmistakable conclusion that all who have ever called upon Christ for salvation are saints, made holy by the Lord.

In today’s context we are not saints because we have not been declared to be saints by a church, nor can we work our way to sainthood like in the Roman Catholic Church. Once we are saved by faith, however, we are called to certain actions befitting our calling as saints (or children) of God. Peter teaches us this: “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”(1 Peter 1:15–16). We can know that Saints – then and now - are not absolutely sinless. What is important is that the lives of saints (children of God) do reflect the reality of the presence of Christ in our hearts…because our saintliness is through our absolute faith in Jesus Christ as our saviour. We can learn from Colossians 2:14-15, “…having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”