Paul's Passing Thoughts

The following is an excerpt of the transcript from Andy Young’s 3rd session at the 2015 TANC Conference on Gospel Discernment and Spiritual Tyranny.

So the Bible says the believer is born again, he is a new creature, he is part of the New Man, the Body of Christ.  What else is he?

A Saint
How is that for a title?  Did you know you’re a saint?  Now here is a word that couldn’t be any farther opposite from sinner!  Do you know how many times believers are referred to as sinners?  I could probably point to no more than maybe 5 at most.  And even in those instances it is always in the past tense. Do you realize the frequency that believers are referred to as saints?  62 times in the NT, believers are referred to as saints.  62 times!  I’m not going to show you all of them, but here are a few select.  You’ll see that in just about every epistle the believers are addressed as saints in the salutation.

Romans 1:7  “To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

1Corinthians 1:2  “Unto the assembly of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours:”

Ephesians 1:1  “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus:”

Romans 15:25-26  “But now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints.  26  For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem.”

Ephesians 4:12  “For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:”

And we could go on and on and on.  Believers are saints.  Now, as if that wasn’t exciting enough, take a look at this word in the Greek.  Do you know what the word saint is in the Greek?

αγιος (hag-ee-oss) – “Holy”

Look at that.  Holy.  In each of the 62 instances it is this word for holy.  That means you could go through each instance, 62 times in the NT, and replace the word saint with holy, or holy ones.  The Bible calls believers “holy ones”.  You are holy.  Did you know that?  You are not a sinner, you are holy!  You are a holy one.

Now if any of you watching online now or maybe later on when this is archived, if you tuned in last year for the conference you will remember I talked about Sanctification.  And in my first session last year I walked us through scripture and we were able to derive a truly biblical, meaningful definition of this word holy?  Does anyone remember what we came up with?  If you don’t remember or if you didn’t tune in for that session, here is the definition we came up with for holy.

Holy – a place or thing which is distinct from that which is common, ordinary, or just like everything else.  (profane)

And as we worked through our understanding of this word we discovered that the opposite of holiness was not sinfulness, but profane.  And profane in the Biblical sense has to do with this idea of being common, or ordinary, or just like everything else.  So, while it is true that believers are not sinners – we’ve already established that through the new birth – we have a special status.  We are holy.  We are distinct from that which is profane.  We are not common, we are not just like everybody else.  Some people like to use the term “set apart” as a means of understanding our sanctification, and that’s a good way to look at it because it encompasses this notion of being distinct.  Setting something apart makes it distinct.

So this takes us back to the sanctification issue that I talked about last year.  And I think it begs the question, if we are saints, if we are holy, if we are distinct, ought we to not act like it?  And I don’t mean we go around casting judgment on others and act like we are better than everyone else.  But if we are in fact holy, don’t you think our behavior should reflect that holiness?  See, we don’t let our behavior define who we are, but rather I think it’s the other way around, who we are should manifest itself in our behavior.  And you can think back to our last session on the New Man, were we had this contrast between behaviors that characterized the old man, like lying and arguing and licentiousness, and behaviors that characterize the New Man, loving each other, caring for each other, and so on.   And you see the motivation for this is love.  This has to do with love for the law and keeping the law.  Not for justification, but because we love our Father and we love others, so we use the law in this way, we keep the law out of a motivation of love.  And this is the reality of what it means to be a saint; to be a holy one.

So believer’s are saints.  What else are we?  How does the Bible refer to believers?

Watch all of Andy’s 3rd session below.