I am so thankful we have preserved writings from the New Testament as old as from 300AD. So many things have gotten out of whack since then. That’s one reason why I’m writing this blog. I want to get back to why the Gospel of Jesus was the best thing you could ever hear. Why was it so freeing? Why was it so joyful? Why was it so wonderful to hear? Well, I think I found another clue: Believing in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus (the “Gospel”) makes you a saint.

When I think of the word saint, I automatically think of Mother Teresa. This was an amazing women who utterly gave up her life to go to and serve among some of the lowliest people in the world. She went to the poorest of the poor, the outcast, the rejected nobodies. These people were treated lower than household pets. Even dogs had more food, love and respect than the human beings Mother Teresa cared about. The people she went do were dying in the street as other people passed right on by going about their business. Well, Mother Teresa didn’t pass them by. Rather, she took them in and gave them a warm, caring, hospitable last few days.

I think we would all agree that this selfless woman truly was a saint. I believe she was given that official title by the Pope just a few years (5?) after her death. It is rare that the Pope give the title of “Saint” to anyone, especially so soon after their death. It would seem that to become a “saint” you really have to earn it.

Or do you?

We equate the word “saint” with someone who truly earned it, like Mother Teresa. I’m not sure how the meaning of the word ended up like that but that’s not how it started.

In the letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus. ~Eph 1:1

What stood out to me in this passage is how Paul addresses everyone in the church at Ephesus. He calls them saints. The greek word we translate as saint is “hagios” and means “most holy thing”. Paul tells everyone in the church that they are “most holy things”. I like to paraphrase this as “they are as holy as you can get.”

Is every single person in that church (likely thousands) as qualified to be a saint as Mother Teresa? Did Paul personally know every single person in the church? Not likely. Why then are they all saints? The answer is in the following verses:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will-to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. ~ Eph 1:3-8 (emphasis mine)

Here we see that in Christ, though Christ, and because of Christ, we

• have been given every spiritual blessing
• are holy and blameless in sight of God
• have been bought back, or redeemed, when Jesus died on the cross
• have forgiveness of our sins, moral wrongs, mistakes, failures, and flaws (past tense–it’s a done deal, finished and unchangeable)
• have all of this for free (unearned and not due to anything we’ve done)

When we trusted Jesus to “save” us, he took away our sins and gave us his holiness. As our sins were punished on the cross, and if we accepted and received that gift, our sins have been taken away from us. Jesus took our sins upon himself, leaving us with no remaining sin. And where there is no sin, there is complete holiness. That is why everyone who trusts Christ to “save them from their sin” is a saint. The title saint is not just for people who have “earned” it in some why by living some outstanding life. In fact, no one can earn the title of saint  anyway, because even people like Mother Teresa had bad days and in some way did things that were wrong. Only Jesus was perfect enough to be sacrificed for our sins. He was the only one who was completely holy. Because he had no sin, he was qualified to die for us. As Paul writes to the Corinthians

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. ~ 2 Cor 5:21

The righteousness of God means everything about us has been made right. It means we stand righteous before God. It means that, in Christ, through Christ, and because of Christ, we do not have to “get right with God” because we are right with God. We are the righteousness of God. Remember the passage above says that we are “holy and blameless in His sight.” Because we are holy and blameless in the sight of God, and all our sins have been nailed to the cross, we are saints! We are “most holy things”! You are a saint, a Most Holy Thing. I am a saint, a Most Holy Thing. Everyone who has received this great news is a saint! Believe that about yourself and view others who are in Christ the way Paul did: as saints!