\u00a0Not long ago I wrote about how often the Bible uses the term “disciple” to designate a follower of Christ and how we tend to prefer “Christian” or “believer”.<\/p>\n\n\n
Here’s a New Testament word for a believer that is even less popular than “disciple”: Saint.<\/p>\n\n\n
If calling ourselves “disciples” makes us uncomfortable, the word “saint” makes us positively recoil.<\/p>\n\n\n
“Oh, I’m no saint,” we will say.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Really? Why not?<\/p>\n\n\n
The Apostle Paul addresses his letter to the Romans like this: “To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints”. (1:7)<\/p>\n\n\n
To be saints is our calling!<\/p>\n\n\n
But “saint”\u00a0doesn’t mean “a person who is perfect in every way”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
“Saint” means one who is “set apart by (or for) God, holy, sacred”.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
We need to reclaim “saint” in its original meaning. Because as followers of Christ, we ARE set apart for God’s purposes.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
If we don’t understand that – if we don’t live that as our reality – we are in grave spiritual danger.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0Not long ago I wrote about how often the Bible uses the term “disciple” to designate a follower of Christ and how we tend to prefer “Christian” or “believer”. Here’s a New Testament word for a believer that is even less popular than “disciple”: Saint. If calling ourselves “disciples” makes us uncomfortable, the word “saint” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9415,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9414\/revisions\/9415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}