Saints are not just what we call a pro football player from New Orleans, they are not merely important dead Christians. The term saint is applied to all believers in Jesus Christ. Paul regularly uses the term saint when referring to the people whom he is writing. From the Greek that translation can either be “saint” or “holy one.” So then what does it mean to be a holy one or a saint?

The term holy is best defined as “being set apart.” When we say that God is holy we mean tht he is far greater  than all else. We are called holy ones because of the work of Christ. Jesus Christ while being holy and righteous took became sin on our behalf that we may be counted as righteous and holy. We are holy because we are given the holiness of of Christ as he is our substitution or as the writer of To Diognetus called it “the sweet exchange.”

Sadly in the last 100 years we have seen Christians take the idea of set apart to mean that we are separate. To be defined as a Christian in culture today seems to be that we are different from worldly things and separate ourselves from sinful activities. Being a Christian is more defined by what we don’t do instead of what we do or whose we are. I wonder what the world would be like if we did not take set apart to mean that we run from the world and instead we engaged it. If we took on injustice, if we loved people not for our gain but because God loved them first. We need to take the words of Paul seriously in Ephesians 2 as he tells us that we are not saved to boast, but are saved to be God’s workmanship and to do good works.