Chapter 1: Me — A Saint?
CHAPTER 1
ME — A SAINT?
The church in the Roman town of Corinth was messed up. Really messed up. They were always squabbling among themselves and breaking up into cliques. They got drunk at the Lord’s Supper. They tolerated all kinds of sexual immorality, even a man sleeping with his stepmother. They sued each other in court, abused their freedom in Christ, totally disrupted their own worship services, and got hopelessly confused about key elements of their faith.
And do you know what Paul called the Corinthian Christians?
He called them saints.
He addressed his first letter “to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:2).
Today we wouldn’t call those messed-up Corinthians saints. That’s the name we use for really holy people, like the original apostles or other long-dead people who led spiritually outstanding lives. Or sometimes we’ll refer to an unusually wise, godly person as a saint: “If there ever was a saint, it is my grandmother.”
But the Corinthians weren’t spiritually outstanding or especially godly. So why did Paul address them as saints?
Actually, Paul used that word other places too, and he always applied it to ordinary believers (see, for example, Romans 1:7; 16:15; 2 Corinthians 1:1; Ephesians 1:1; Philippians 1:1; 4:21-22; Colossians 1:2). That makes a little more sense when you look at what the Bible words really mean.
The Greek word for saint, hagios, means “one who is separated or set apart.” It’s related to hagiadzo, or “sanctified,” which means “set aside for a special purpose, cleansed and holy.” And both of those words show up in 1 Corinthians 1:2. It sounds a little awkward, but we could translate Paul’s words as “to those separated in Christ Jesus, called to be separated ones.”
Separated for what? A better question is, Separated for whom? And the answer is, “for God.” Every true believer has been separated or set apart by God for God.
Read that again. Separated. Set apart. By God. For God.
If you’re a believer, that means you!
You are a saint.
Titus 2:14 describes Jesus as the one “who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession.” And 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 tells us, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” Together, these two passages help us understand the biblical meaning of a saint. It is someone Jesus bought with His own blood on the cross, someone set aside to belong to Him.
What does it mean to be set apart? To me, it’s a little like what happens to the cadets who enter the U.S. Air Force Academy near our home. It’s not your typical freshman experience! From the time they get off the bus at the Academy grounds, cadets undergo intense discipline — physical, mental, and emotional. The pressure eases up some over time, but it’s never completely removed. Even seniors face heavy academic and behavioral demands.
Why are these cadets treated like this? Because the Academy doesn’t exist to prepare schoolteachers or Wall Street bankers. It exists for one purpose: to prepare officers for the U.S. Air Force. The cadets are “set apart” for that purpose.
In a similar way, every new believer has been set apart by God for a purpose: to be transformed into the likeness of His Son, Jesus Christ. So in that sense, all believers are saints — separated from their old, sinful way of life and set apart to increasingly glorify God as their lives are transformed.
We don’t become saints by our actions. We are made saints by the immediate supernatural action of the Holy Spirit, who works this change deep within our inner being. In fact, we actually become new creations in Christ (see 2 Corinthians 5:17). We’ve been “delivered … from the domain of darkness and transferred … to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13).
This change of state is described prophetically in Ezekiel 36:26: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (NIV). Quite a transformation — from dead, unresponsive hearts to living, responsive ones. And that’s what happens in us when we become believers.
But here’s where it gets tricky, because even after we are made saints, we keep on sinning. Sad but true. We do it all the time — nearly every waking hour, in thought, word, or deed. Even if we do something good, our motives are often impure or mixed. The messed-up Corinthian church stands as Exhibit A for the reality that saints can be very sinful in our attitudes and actions.
Why the disconnect between what God has seemingly promised — a whole new, set-apart life — and what we experience in our daily lives? It’s because there’s something inside of us that fights against the new person we’ve become. As 1 Peter 2:11 puts it, the “passions of the flesh … wage war against your soul.” Even though a decisive change always occurs in the heart of every new believer, that change doesn’t immediately show itself in that person’s attitudes and actions. It takes time and struggle, and the war is never completely over in this life. (We’ll talk more about this battle in chapter 4.)
But that doesn’t mean we have an excuse for sinful behavior! The whole point of the battle is to move toward becoming what we already are, what Jesus has already made us: His saints. That’s why Paul began his first letter to the Corinthian church by reminding them that they were “sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.” Then he spent the remainder of his letter vigorously urging them to live up to that calling.
He was saying, “You are saints. Now act like saints!”
Or as it’s sometimes put, “Be what you are.”
When I served in the U.S. Navy many years ago, there was an expression, “conduct unbecoming an officer.” It covered anything from minor offenses to major ones that required a court martial. But the expression was more than a description of wrong behavior. It was a statement of what was expected of us as officers. Someone accused of “conduct unbecoming” had failed to live up to his responsibility to act as an officer should act.
Perhaps we need a similar expression for believers: “conduct unbecoming a saint.” But wait! We do have a word for that: sin. And just as “conduct unbecoming an officer” covers a wide range of misconduct, the word sin covers a wide range of misbehavior, from gossip to adultery, from impatience to murder. Obviously, there are degrees of seriousness. But in the final analysis, sin is sin. It is conduct unbecoming a saint.
All believers, in other words, are like the Corinthians. We are saints, set aside by God for God, who more often than not don’t act like saints.
Which is another way of saying that all of us saints are sinners. And it’s time to take both our sainthood and our sneaky sins a little more seriously.
YOUR TURN
“To those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.… Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 1:2-3)
ENGAGE
1. How have you heard the word saint used in your experience? What does it feel like to be called a saint?
2. Read 1 Peter 2:9-11. What do these verses tell you about being “set apart by Christ for Christ”?
3. Name a time when the “war against your soul” felt especially real to you. How did that situation resolve itself?
BRING IT TO GOD
Take a minute to meditate on what it means to be a saint — what an incredible privilege and responsibility. Then thank God for saving you and ask Him to help you act like what you already are.