Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Saints

“All the saints send their greetings.” 2 Corinthians 13:13
The word ‘saint’ conjures up a very different picture in the minds of most people today than its Biblical usage. People think of ‘saints’ as those whom the Catholic church in particular has set on a pedestal above other believers of extreme piety, having some sort of superior connection with God that enables them to perform miracles and so forth. Very few people, they say, can be ‘saints’.
This is far from the Biblical meaning of the word. The Greek word translated ‘saint’ is hagios, meaning one who is holy, or set apart; morally pure, clean, consecrated. It does not mean one-who-is-holier-than-thou, or one-who-never-did-anything-wrong. No, all believers are set apart by God for His purpose, all of us have been called to live morally pure and clean lives unto Him, all of us have been consecrated by the blood of Jesus Christ. All of us are ‘saints’.
The word hagios occurs 62 times in the New Testament to refer to regular believers like you and me. There is no hierarchy of spirituality amongst us; there are no ‘super-Christians’ who have better standing before God. We all come before God on an equal footing – because we were once all sinners who were lost, but are now found.

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