6: Iam aSaint
Six
I AM A SAINT
Saint is one of the most widely misunderstood words in our Christian vocabulary. At some point in church history, people began to call the original apostles saints, contrary to the plain meaning of the word as used in the New Testament. So now we hear of Saint Paul, Saint Peter, Saint Andrew, and the like. In the Roman Catholic tradition, people of unusual achievement are sometimes designated as saints. Among evangelicals we often think of saints as exceptionally godly and holy people.
The truth is, though, every believer is a saint. That’s why Paul’s greetings in his epistles often include something such as, “To the saints who are in Ephesus,” (Ephesians 1:1, see also Philippians 1:1, Colossians 1:2). Even when addressing Corinth, a church that was all messed up both theologically and morally, Paul wrote, “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints…” (1 Corinthians 1:2). In fact, sainthood is not a spiritual attainment, or even a recognition of such attainment. It is rather a state or status into which God brings every believer. All Christians are saints.
It is a very unfortunate and unhelpful thing that we so often misunderstand this short, simple word. To use a word that applies to all Christians in a way that suggests there is a special, elite class of Christians, is doubly wrong: it steals from the church important truths that God intended to communicate through the idea of sainthood, and it promotes jealousy and division within the body of Christ by suggesting a hierarchy that does not exist.
Let’s see what being a saint really means.
Christ’s Own Possession
Closely associated with saint are the words sanctify and sanctification. All three words are from the same Greek word family (hagios, hagiasmos and hagiazo). That’s why Paul writes to the Corinthians as “those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.” So a saint is someone who has been sanctified. If you have been a believer for a while, you may be thinking, But isn’t sanctification a process, the process of becoming more holy? Yes, but that’s not all it is.
The basic meaning of the verb sanctify is “to separate or set apart.” A saint is someone who has been set apart. Set apart for what? A better question is, “Set apart for whom?” And the answer is, for God.
Both Paul and Peter use an identical phrase to refer to Christians: “a people for his own possession” (Titus 2:14, 1 Peter 2:9). Paul says, “Christ, who gave himself for us….to purify for himself a people for his own possession.” Peter says, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.” This phrase gets at the heart of what it means to be a saint. We have been set apart to be Christ’s own possession.
This is the language of ownership. As saints we no longer “own” ourselves in the sense that we are free to live as we please. Rather, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” A saint is someone who no longer belongs to or “owns” himself. The name on the title to his life is no longer the name he is known by. The titleholder to the life of every Christian is Jesus Christ. This is what it means for Christ to be Lord.
We speak often of the Lordship of Christ over our lives. Indeed, the prayer I most often pray for our grandchildren is that they will trust Christ as their Savior and obey him as Lord. So Lordship is a good term, but we might understand it better if we sometimes spoke of Lordship for what it truly is: Christ’s ownership over our lives.
In today’s Christian culture, this is actually a radical concept, if not an outright offensive one. We regularly talk about how we may choose to give something to God. I give some of my time or my money. The clear implication of this kind of language is not only that all my possessions are my own, but that I, too, belong entirely to myself, and I go through life making choices about how I will invest my time, my energy, and my resources.
The Bible has an entirely different perspective: none of these things are your own. Indeed, you are not your own. You were bought with a price, the price being the blood of the Son of God shed for your salvation. Having been purchased, you no longer belong to yourself.
I’m not suggesting that you have to ask the Lord’s permission to make every little daily decision about how to spend your time and money. No, God has given us a great deal of freedom in our decisions and choices (see for example Romans 14:1-12). But I am suggesting that probably all of us should become more thoughtful about whether our actions and decisions are pleasing to our “owner,” the Lord Jesus Christ. The Scripture says, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Whatever I do, I am to do it for God’s glory. This includes all of life.
Note, for example, Paul’s words to the slaves in the Colossian church, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,… You are serving the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23). Although Paul was addressing slaves, the principle behind his words applies equally to employer-employee relationships. Let’s say you are a promising young executive in a large corporation. As you aspire to greater responsibility and commensurate salary increases, why are you doing it? In this context, who is the practical owner of your life? Is it you, or Christ? Do you desire that promotion for your benefit, or for Christ’s glory? This is just one example, but the principle applies to all of life. Our whole outlook on life should be colored by the fact that, as saints, we no longer belong to ourselves, but to him.
The Work of the Holy Spirit
The more common and actually erroneous view of saint is that it is some kind of second step in the Christian life. Those who want to “go all out” in being a Christian, if they try really hard, can become the kind of person some might call a “saint.” For Christians who hold that view, the straightforward biblical definition of saint that I’m trying to communicate comes off as odd or radical when in fact it is an essential, inescapable aspect of the gospel. Indeed, this being “set apart” by the work of the Holy Spirit to be Christ’s own possession is at the very center of our salvation experience. Consider the following two passages:
But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thessalonians 2:13-14).
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you (1 Peter 1:1-2).
Note that in these two passages both Peter and Paul connect the sanctifying work of the Spirit to our salvation. In the New International Version, 2 Thessalonians 2:13 reads, “God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.” And 1 Peter 1:2 reads, “[You] have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood.”
We see in both of these passages that the sanctifying work of the Spirit, far from being a second step in the Christian life, is actually the first step. It is because of the setting-apart work of the Spirit that we actually do believe the truth of the gospel and trust in Christ as our Savior.
• We were dead in our sins, but he made us alive (Ephesians 2:1, 4).
• We were under the power of Satan, but he rescued us (Acts 26:18).
• We were in the domain of darkness but he delivered us (Colossians 1:13).
• Our minds were blinded by Satan, but he opened them to the truth (2 Corinthians 4:4-5).
Yes, we believe the gospel, but we do so because the Spirit has set us apart to be Christ’s own possession. Yes, we do obey Jesus Christ by trusting in him, but we do so because of the setting-apart work of the Holy Spirit. There is no salvation apart from God’s sanctifying work.
When we return to one of our earlier verses, 1 Corinthians 1:2, we see also that we are sanctified in Christ Jesus. Remember that “in Christ” is Paul’s shorthand expression for our union with Christ. So the work of the Spirit is to unite us to Christ, both as our representative before God in his sinless life and his death, and also as the source of our new spiritual life as we are grafted into the vine. This means that the sanctifying work of the Spirit is more than merely a change of labels such as from sinner to saint. It is a change of heart. Therefore it must express itself, though in varying degrees, in everyone who trusts in Christ as Savior. This thought naturally leads to the next subject.
Progressive Sanctification
It is the nature of life, whether in a plant, an animal, or a human being, to grow to a stage of maturity. The same is true of the spiritual life we have from God, with a major difference that we never fully arrive at spiritual maturity in this life. This spiritual growth has historically been called sanctification. However, in order to distinguish it from the point-in-time sanctification by the Spirit that has been the theme of this chapter so far, some of us use the term progressive sanctification. In this phrase, progressive implies progress or growth, and this theme appears repeatedly in the New Testament letters. There is no question about it. We are to pursue spiritual maturity.
Scores of books have been written on progressive sanctification, including several by me. So it is well beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss this subject except to make two observations.
• The definitive point-in-time sanctification that makes us “saints” is solely the work of the Holy Spirit. We contribute nothing to his divine almighty action. In this sanctification we are all equally sanctified.
• By contrast, progressive sanctification involves our utmost effort, though that effort must be directed and empowered by the Holy Spirit. This sanctification varies in degree from one believer to another, and as I stated earlier, will never be completed in this life.
The Motivation for Living as a Saint
The implications of living as a saint—one who is “owned” by Christ Jesus—are quite radical, far more so than most of us are accustomed to thinking about. What then will motivate us to pursue saintly lives? What is it that will make us want to be what we ought to be? The answer is love and gratitude for what God has done for us in Christ, as expressed in the gospel.
Jesus once said to a self-righteous Pharisee, “he who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:47). The opposite is obviously true. He who is forgiven much, loves much. The question for each of us then is, how much do we realize we’ve been forgiven? If we define sin largely in terms of the more flagrant sins that we don’t commit, then we will have little sense of our own sin, and little sense of forgiveness, and consequently little love for Christ.
But if we truly grasp the idea that being a saint means being one of Christ’s own possessions, and if we acknowledge how far short we come in living up to that reality, then we will begin to see how much we’ve been forgiven. And the good news of the gospel is that we truly have been forgiven of the sin of living largely for ourselves, that is, of effectively stealing the ownership of our loves from Christ.
After spending three quarters of his letter to the Romans on the mercies of God as displayed in the gospel, Paul says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). In effect Paul is appealing to them, and to us, to acknowledge Christ’s ownership by presenting our bodies, or our entire selves to him as a continual daily living sacrifice. But we are to do so in view of the mercies of God. Our love and gratitude can only be a response to his love and mercy toward us.
So once again we see that our identity in Christ, our answer to the question, “Who am I?”, involves both privileges and responsibilities. Though in this chapter we’ve focused more on the responsibilities, consider the inestimable privilege of being a saint. We have been delivered from the power of Satan, we have been freed from the domain of darkness, our minds which were blinded by Satan have been opened to understand and believe the gospel. All this is bound up in the action of the Holy Spirit in setting us apart to be Christ’s possession.
I am a saint: I do not belong to myself, but to God. I have been purchased and declared holy by God, and set apart for God. Thus, God is ever at work to cause me to grow in spiritual maturity, a process in which he calls me to cooperate, in every way, out of gratitude for his mercy.