One of the Blogs I look at regularly is 'The Continuum', and in particular the contributions of Fr. Robert Hart, often sermons. The 31st October sermon ready for All Saints' Day really got me thinking in several areas. One part concerned a challenge to traditional evanglical thinking that all believers are 'saints' from the instant one believes. The word is "'oi 'agioi", = the holy ones, in the Greek.
Fr. Hart remarks that sainthood is something we should be aspiring to and not something that we automatically become upon 'accepting Jesus', being 'born again' or whatever phrase you want to use for becoming a Believer. He argues from the opening greetings of Romans and the Corinthian epistles that we like they 'called to be saints'. I noticed by contrast the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians simply refer to those addressed as 'the saints'.
And then came the sermon at the little Beresford Road Evangelical Church, Lowestoft this morning. Ephesians 4 - 'put off the old man; put on the new man'. So in other words with the aid of the Holy Spirit that we are given as believers, it is a conscious act of the will to want to become Holy or saintlike.
Sanctification is a cooperative process in other words, its not automatic. Paul in Romans 6, to paraphrase, says 'how on earth can you contemplate deliberately sinning when you've experienced the undeserved favour of God?' Fr. Hart also does a good job at demolishing the comic book, computer game, or TV Superhero idea of saints that some misguidedly espouse. Most that readily spring to my mind would want at most to be remembered as (saved) sinful human beings struggling to follow Jesus and putting off the 'old man' ... And that brings me to the motto for St. Mark's Church, Famagusta for 2009· "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and forever. Amen." 2 Peter 3:18
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