Are You A Saint?

I Corinthians 1:1-9

When thinking of yourself, do you think of yourself as St. Mike or St. Bill, St. Carol or St. Maggie?  If people knew me as well as I know myself, they sure wouldn’t think of me as a saint!  Perhaps you feel the same way.  But if you are a born-again believer in the Lord Jesus, than that is what you are, regardless of how often or how bad you might slip up.

These verses introduce the first letter of Paul to the church in Corinth.  After he states his name as the author, Paul then greets the believers in verse 2. One specific word that Paul used as he greeted them was “saints”.  A little study of the church in Corinth would show that those in this church were anything other than what we think of when we think of “saints”.  We might think of Mother Teresa, St. Francis, or any number of good, holy men and women.

In the church of Corinth there were many problems.  There were church factions, members bringing lawsuits against each other, and most glaringly, gross immorality.  This included a church member openly sleeping with his step-mother.  Paul knew of these sins, and addresses them in his letter.  Nonetheless, he called these people “saints”.  Why?

The word “saint” is in the Greek “hagios”, which also meant “holy” or “sacred”.  How could these people be saints?!  Paul knew, though, that when a person accepts Jesus as Savior, their sins, past, present, and future, are washed in the Blood of Jesus and forgiven.  We are sanctified, or set apart, as holy to the Lord.  That is not to be a license to live and act any way one wishes, as Paul states in many of his letters.  He spends a good part of this letter chastising the Corinthians for their sinful conduct.  As believers, we are saints - ones who are set aside, sanctified to the Lord.  In Romans 12:1-2, Paul exhorts us to be holy.

On another note, a phrase in verse 9 stuck out to me - “God is faithful”.  For many years my life has been one trial after another, after another, with no end in sight.  The one hope, the only hope, I have been able to cling to is knowing that God is faithful.  Nothing or nobody else may be, but God is faithful.  I can trust in Him.