Saints ꓤ Us ~ Greg J

Previously:  I ❤ Translators ... Saints ... Weirdos

As previously demonstrated, start with an online Bible that contains the word “saints”. A majority of them do! Search for “saints”. You should find around 60 verses in the New Testament. Then comes journalist work.  Where are the saints? What are they doing? How did they become saints? Who are these saints? 
 
The conclusions: When Luke, Peter, and especially Paul were writing, saints were definitely in Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Colossae, Philippi, and Jerusalem—apparently everywhere. The saints also were in trouble, they were in jail, they needed money, and they needed prayer. They needed to keep out of the wild lives they previously had lived. They got the titles “saints” and “holy people” (hagios in Greek) not by being valedictorians, not by being exceptionally good, but by God calling them.

So it is I conclude that saints are the people usually known as Christians.

Saints are not necessarily super-Christians. Saints do not necessarily wear shiny Frisbee™ hats. Saints are not necessarily dead or martyrs. Saints don't necessarily walk on water, though I have seen that.

Contemporary saints are us. We Christians are saints.

This has terrifying implications for my life and yours.  I want to address those at another time, but it suffices to again cite an encouragement from Peter in his first letter:

As obedient children, do not be conformed
to the passions of your former ignorance, but as
he who called you is holy [hagion],
you also be holy [hagioi] in all your conduct.
...
But you are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood,
a holy nation [hagios ethnos],
a people for his own possession,
that you may proclaim
the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Once you were not a people,
but now you are God's people.
Once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy.

Jesus prayed sometimes alone and sometimes with his team. In the New Testament, normal growth into actual holy lives requires that mixture of time with God and time interacting with believers. Moreover, a repeated idea in the New Testament is that Christians are a community of specialists: people with different gifts helping one another live and grow, quite as various body organs cooperate.  Of the several NT chapters dealing with body life, Ephesians chapter 4 is what I have been studying recently: “…And he [Christ] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints [that’s us] for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, … so when each part is working properly, the body grows as it builds itself up in love.”

Before continuing how equipping can work, I have name-calling to finish.  We call ourselves Christians. That term shows up only three times in the Bible! First is Acts 11:26: “in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.” Check out the “almost Christian” in Acts 26, and the suffering Christians in 1 Peter 4.
 
There are many more Biblical words for Christians.  “More-Biblical” matters to some people when it’s convenient. We now know “saints” is one term for Christian, and it is used 60 times. Did you spot “disciple” above? Disciple translates a common Greek word mathētēs, meaning dedicated student or avid follower, a devotee, more than a fan. There were disciples of John the Baptist. There were disciples of the Pharisees. Outside the Bible you could find disciples of the Stoics—I have been accused of being one. You could cheerlead for the Epicureans. I count a whopping 233 Bible references to disciples of Christ.
 
I bet you can think of yet more Bible words that can substitute for “Christian”.  Here’s what comes to my mind. Ready?
 
"Believer" (pisteuontes) occurs in the sense of “Christian” at least 14 times in the New Testament, for example, Acts 5:14: "And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women". Some believers were Pharisees, a practice that continues today.
 
"Brothers" of course can refer to siblings or best friends. English New Testaments use "Brothers" (adelphos) around 124 times for Christians. Some translations use "brothers and sisters".

"The Church" (ekklēsia in various forms) is strongly associated with a group of Christians or their meeting place. Church appears in this sense around 106 times in the New Testament. Ekklēsia is used also for the Hebrews journeying to the promised land. It is used outside the Bible as a term for any assembly, any group of people, or a place where a group meets. In Acts 19:32, ekklēsia is not translated "church", for it is used of a riotous mob of pagans. Youth groups, pre-schoolers, if the shoe fits…. Preachers sometimes observe that ekklēsia breaks down to base words meaning “out” and “called”. Scholars caution that after 1,400 years of use even before Christ, Greek-speaking people cared about root words just like we care that the English word “humor” derives from “bodily fluid”. Interestingly, the choice of the English word "church" for an assembly of Christians involved some politics. For the Bible that eventually bore his name, King James specified:

“3. The Old Ecclesiastical Words to be kept, viz. the word Church
not to be translated Congregation &c.”

This choice appeased some who wanted King James and Anglican leaders to remain owners of church real estate, authorities over church people, and defenders of the faith.

The Bible has several more words for “Christians”.

• Are you among "Followers of The Way"?
  
• Are you one of the "Friends"?
• Oh my, are you among the "Nazarenes"?
• We are voting this year. Are you among "The Elect"? Eklektos references Christians 19 times.
• Are you “beloved”? In some translations it comes out as merely “friends”. This term (Greek source agapētoi) is used sometimes for specific individuals. It is used in plural about 29 times for Christians as a group. John particularly likes to call his readers “beloved”. In the south-central US pronounce this as one syllable "bluhvd" or two syllables "all-yall".
  
• Some metaphors for Christians include “children of God” (around 16 times),.
  
• “Servants of God” (around 10 times) “servants of Christ” (around 4 times), “coworkers” or "fellow workers" (not to be confused with “cow-orkers”) (around 13 times) also identify Christians.
  
• “Sheep” tends to refer to people in general, but is sometimes used of Christians only. Ditto for "lambs".
• Once we are called “clay pots”, emphasizing our fragile service. I’ve resolved to collect more such metaphors for us. They're encouraging and humbling. The Hebrew Bible—especially the Psalms—has lots of word pictures of God’s people.
  
• 1 Peter 2:9-11 lavishes several descriptions on God's people. It is worth repeating:

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, so that you may declare the glorious deeds of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul."

After all that name-calling, I feel better wearing the label, “saint”.

Next: Equipping One Another