What does it mean to be called a saint by God?
The beginning of Ephesians makes it clear: to be a saint means to belong to Christ Jesus. Because of His grace, we have peace with God (Ephesians 1:2). Through His death on the cross, He paid the penalty of sin for us. This led to our positional sanctification—we are saints because Christ abides in us and we in Him.
Christ has given us spiritual wealth in Him—we will never be condemned by Him because of His work in us. God has adopted us as His children and given us wisdom, sanctification, and righteousness.
All too often, we forget our true identity as saints in Christ. We tend to define ourselves by our jobs or our roles, but our identity in Christ is unchanging and transcendent. We may retire from a career, but we do not retire from our calling in Christ.
On another front, we may lose sight of our identity as saints because of sin. After all, our positional sanctification does not mean we are perfect during this earthbound sojourn. We are still in spiritual warfare against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and Christ continues to sanctify us progressively to be more like Him.
The good news, though, is that our identity does not depend on how we feel at a certain moment. When we fall into sin, we can remember that Christ is the one who called us saints even before the foundation of the earth (Ephesians 1:4).
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