Redefining Identity: Embracing Your Status as a Saint

While we were away on holiday, I finished reading a book that I’ve been working through over the last couple of months. It’s called The Good and Beautiful God by James Bryan Smith. It’s all about getting to know God the way that Jesus knows God, challenging the narratives that we have come to believe which are contrary to who God actually is. I definitely recommend picking it up.

As we were preparing our baptism candidates to go through the waters, I asked them a question: are you a saint? They gave various answers, but none felt comfortable with labelling themselves as a saint. I wonder if you feel the same way?

This is one of those false narratives that we have come to believe through church tradition which is contrary to what Scripture actually says of us. Many of us are comfortable with describing ourselves as “a sinner saved by grace” which is a helpful label to a point. We are, of course, saved by grace, having previously been living a life of sin. But once we have come to Christ, we are no longer labelled as “sinners.” To say “I am a sinner saved by grace” sounds good to us, but what we fail to realise in saying this is that we are continuing to identify ourselves as sinners rather than as saints.

Smith quotes a man called Greg Jones in his book:

“To be forgiven by God, to be initiated in the life in God’s Kingdom, is to be transferred from one narrative – the narrative of death-dealing sin – to the narrative of God’s reconciliation in Christ. And in that latter narrative we are forgiven of our sin so that we can learn to become holy through lifelong repentance and forgiveness.”

Do you see the difference? By coming to Christ we receive forgiveness for our sin, and we are moved from the kingdom of darkness into His wonderful light (1 Peter 2:9). Our status, identity and position are changed so that we now are called saints. As Paul writes in Romans 6:4-11,

“For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was. We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead, and he will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him. When he died, he died once to break the power of sin. But now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus.”

How does knowing that you are alive to God through Christ change the way you will live for him today?