Presented to Alberni Valley Ministries of The Salvation Army, 01 November 2020 by Captain Michael Ramsay
Today is All Saints Day. What do we know about All Saints Day? It is celebrated mostly by the Mainline Churches: Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed, etc. It is the day after All Saints Eve, All Hallows’ Eve, Hallowe’en and the day before All Souls Day (which we won’t chat about today).
I will tell you a little bit what I know about ‘All Saints Day’ – though I must confess that I don't know that much as I grew up in an evangelical church rather than a mainline church - most of my information on this is simply from Doctor Google and Professor Wiki, as well as some proper commentaries, but I am not an expert by any means and I have not had a serious discussion about the Roman Catholic and Mainline understanding of saints with someone who is very well-versed in such matters since I was about the same age as my oldest two daughters are now. This is what I have ‘dug up’ about All Saints Day:
On All Saints Day in some places people visit the graves of their dearly departed and leave gifts, flowers, cards, say prayers, or sing hymns. In the USA some churches hand out candies as people come to pray for the souls of dearly departed family members, friends, and even pets. In parts of Austria and maybe Germany they have special bread that they call “All Saints Bread” which they make for their Godchildren. And then there is Portugal…
In Portugal apparently they make something called “Soul Bread” or simply “souls”. Children then go ‘souling’ on All Saints Day. They go door-to-door and collect 'souls', this ‘soul’ bread. (This is not entirely dissimilar, and probably more healthy than trick-or-treating but I must admit that the idea of my kids going door-to-door collecting people’s souls does sound a little creepy to me!) Some people actually have the Catholic or Lutheran Priests bless the ‘souls’ before they are handed out to the children going door-to-door and apparently the children promise to pray for the souls of the deceased relatives of the people who gave them these ‘souls’ to eat. Leftover ‘souls’ are then given to the poor.
I think that in Roman Catholic understanding All Saints Day is a day to pray for all those who have ‘gone to heaven’ or at least Christians who have left this life. In Methodism, from which tradition The Salvation Army evolved, it is a time to remember the saints ‘who have gone on ahead’, both the famous ones and the obscure ones. Methodists don’t have the whole canonization process that Catholics do and John Wesley, their founder, was certainly opposed to the worship of saints but they do use the word not entirely dissimilar from the Catholic tradition. Saints in Methodism are Biblical figures and historical Christians who have gone before us: sort of like ‘Heroes of the Faith’, as I understand it.
All this -at least to me - is very interesting but do we know who saints are in the Bible? …what the word ‘saint’ actually means? Do we know what a saint really is? In the Bible ‘saint’ is another word for ‘Christian’. It is actually the preferred term for Christians in the NT.
The New Testament word for saint is ‘hagioi’ and ‘hagioi’ is actually a variant of the Greek word for holiness, ‘hagios’;[1] so then, every Christian is a saint and every Christian is by definition supposed to be holy.[2] 1 Peter 1:16, God says, “…be holy because I am holy.”
Hagios, the Greek word for holiness,[3] Hagios-Holiness-Saint-Christian literally means, from the Bible dictionaries, to be perfect or to be spiritually pure.[4] G.B. Stevens writes, “It is evident that Hagios[-Holiness-Saint-Christian] and its kindred words…express something more and higher than ‘hieros’, sacred, outwardly associated with God;…something more than ‘semnos’, worthy, honourable; something more than ‘hagnos’, pure, free from defilement. Hagios[-Holiness-Saint-Christian] is more comprehensive.”[5] 1 Peter 1:16, God says “…be holy because I am holy” and being holy, being a saint, being a Christian is more than being sacred, is more than being worthy, is more than being pure. Holiness, being a saint, being a Christian in the Bible is more than even being free from defilement. It is being perfect. Holiness is to be like God and God says “…be holy because I am holy!”
Doctrine 10 of The Salvation Army says, “We believe that it is the privilege of all believers to be wholly sanctified [holy], and that their whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Now before any of us begin to fret and say, “well I am not perfect so I am not a Christian” or just as bad “you –Michael, or whoever else- aren’t anywhere near perfect so you aren’t a Christian” remember that as 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 reminds us, God will make us perfect, He will make us holy. When we become a part of God’s love family, we obtain a state of holiness and the closer we come to God the more holy, the more Christ-like, we become.[6] Becoming a Christian means becoming a saint, a holy person: It is all the same, as far as the Bible is concerned. The more time we spend with God the more we will be like Him. Colossians 1:12, which we read from today, says that God has already brought us into the inheritance of the saints.[7] Philippians 3:16 says that we can live up to what we have already obtained.
On this All Saints Day, I think this is important because we are all saints here. All of us who have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior are saints; all of us who serve Jesus as our leader and the one who saves us, our rescuer. The passage we read today is from Colossians 1 and this is what Paul writes to the Christians/Saints in Colossae. And Paul gives us the same encouragement that he gave to the 1st Century Colossians. Paul encourages us, as saints, as Christians, that we have the opportunity to be filled with the knowledge of His will (Colossians 1:9) – we can achieve this by praying to God, meeting together, studying and even just reading our Bibles – This is what we can do and we can be filled with the knowledge of God’s will. And as we are filled with the knowledge of God’s will, as we know what God’s hopes and dreams are for us, we can use this knowledge to accept His invitation to life a life worthy of the Lord. As we are now – each of us – holy saints, God can actually help us to be even more holy (Colossians1:10) and His helping us out like that will please Him in every way.[8] God is certainly pleased when we are experiencing this holy life that comes from, Colossians 1:11, resisting temptation. This is important. When we are Christians, saints temptation doesn’t just vanish but our resistance to temptation strengthens us in the Lord so that we can resist even more of what come our way.
I often think of holiness in terms of addiction but we can think of it in relationship to anything that has the potential to drag us down and make us miserable. God is with us when we are addicted and/or struggling with other struggles. God is with us when we are carrying a grudge. God is with us when we are overwhelmed. God provides us a way to be free of the burden of sin and all of these things and everything else that tries to interfere with our salvation, our holiness.
My friends, my fellow saints, let me be clear on this: God is never going to give up on you. No matter what you have gone through and no matter what you are going through, God will never give up on you. No matter what you have done; no matter what you compulsively keep doing, no matter what horrible thing you may possibly do, God will not give up on you. God will not leave you. God will not forsake you; so whatever you are going through right now – no matter how hard it is – don’t give up! God has faith in you.
You can make it. This is what it means to be holy. Even if you are struggling with something absolutely terrible like addiction, God will not give up on you. Even if you are struggling with something as soul-destroying as not forgiving someone; no matter what you are struggling against, God will not give up on you. He will offer you a way out and He will offer you comfort while you are still in the midst of it trying to get through that way out.
God invites us to the peace and security of being holy even and especially in the middle of our troubles. Hebrews 13:5, Deuteronomy 31:6: He will never give up on us and so, Philippians 3:16: we can live up to the holiness that we already obtained when we first gave our lives to Christ and Colossians 1:12: so you and I, we will receive the full inheritance of the saints. On this, All Saints Day, I want to encourage you that each of you who has placed your hope in the Lord are God’s holy saints and He will never give up on you and He is more than able to deliver you from everything that concerns you today and forever more. He will deliver you and He will make you holy, even as He is holy.
[1] John D.W. Watts. 'Holy.' In Holman Bible Dictionary, general editor Trent C. Butler. Nashville, Tennesee: Holman Bible Publishers, 1991), 660. W.E. Vine. 'Holiness, Holy, Holily.' In Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Word. (Nashville, Tennessee: Royal Publishers Inc., 1939), 555.
[2] Ralph P. Martin, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon (Interpretation: Louisville, Kentucky, USA.: John Knox Press, 1991), 101 Holy ones recalls Israel's destiny as God's elect.
[3] Cf. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, ‘40: Hagios’ (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1995), 1.
[4] John D.W. Watts. 'Holy.' In Holman Bible Dictionary, general editor Trent C. Butler. Nashville, Tennesee: Holman Bible Publishers, 1991), 660. Cf. Paul Minear, Interpretation 37 no 1 Ja 1983, p. 22: In his death and resurrection, Jesus' holiness or sanctification became the measure and standard of all holiness, whether of places, times, things, or persons. (Key passages which reflect this are John 10:36; 17:17-19; I Cor. 1:2; 6:11; Heb. 2:11; 10:10; 12:14-24; 13:12-14.)"
[5] G.B. Stevens in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary. Cited W.E. Vine. 'Holiness, Holy, Holily.' In Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Word. (Nashville, Tennessee: Royal Publishers Inc., 1939), 557.
[6] Curtis Vaughan, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Colossians/Exposition of Colossians/I. Introduction (1:1-14)/A. Salutation (1:1, 2), Book Version: 4.0.2 : This suggests that the root idea in "holy" (hagios) is not excellence of character but dedication, the state of being set apart for the work and worship of God.
[7] Cf. Solomon Andria, Africa Bible Commentary, (Nairobi, Kenya: Word Alive Publishers, 2010), 1482.
[8] NT Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters (Louisville, Kentucky, USA.: John Knox Press, 2004). 142-147, likens it to new plants growing in a garden replacing the old but acknowledges that we have apart to play in it like ducks following their mother.
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