Already Made a Saint
by Gloria Copeland
The world has a very different idea of what it means to be a saint than God does. To the world, a saint is someone who’s been dead a long time.
It’s someone who in life wasn’t liked by the world much at all (many were ridiculed or even martyred), but now that they’re dead, people have decided they were perfect. That they were better by far than the rest of us could ever hope to be.
God, on the other hand, says in the Bible that every one of us who has received Jesus as Lord and Savior is a saint, right now!
We don’t have to wait until we’ve been dead a thousand years. We don’t have to wait for a group of people to decide we qualify. God Himself has qualified us. He’s made us righteous with His own righteousness, sanctified us by Jesus’ blood, set us apart for Himself, and made us holy.
“Holy one” is what the word saint literally means. So, according to God, if you’re born again this is your true identity: You are one of His holy ones. You are indeed a saint. So are all the rest of us in the Body of Christ. That’s why God can say to us, as He does in 1 Peter 1:16, “Be ye holy; for I am holy.” We have the capacity to do it. We can be holy on the outside because we’ve already been made holy on the inside.
Of course, being holy doesn’t mean we never mess up. It doesn’t mean we’ve never done anything wrong and never will. (That concept comes from the world, which is why all their saints have to be dead. Only dead people don’t mess up.)
No, as Vine’s Bible Dictionary says, holiness simply “signifies separation to God and conduct befitting those so separated.” It refers to being dedicated to God and being His special treasure; to coming out of the darkness of the world and putting Him first so He can fellowship with you and be God in your life.
This is what God has wanted for His people ever since the beginning! It’s what He had in mind when He created Adam and Eve.
Remember how, in Genesis 3, He used to come down in the cool of the day to fellowship with them in the Garden of Eden? He did that because He wanted to have a special relationship with them. He wanted them to be His family, to believe His Word and obey Him so He could be their Source of supply and BLESSING, and they could enjoy His presence forever.
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