We are accustomed to confine the word to persons who tower above their
brethren in holiness and manifest godliness and devoutness. The New
Testament never does anything like that. Some people fancy that nobody
can be a saint unless he wears a special uniform of certain conventional
sanctities. The New Testament does not take that point of view at all,
but regards all true believers in Jesus Christ as being, therein and
thereby, saints.
Now, what does it mean by that? The word at bottom simply signifies
separation. Whatever is told off from a mass for a specific purpose
would be called, if it were a thing, 'holy.' But there is one special
kind of separation which makes a person a saint, and that is separation
to God, for His uses, in obedience to His commandment, that He may
employ the man as He will. So in the Old Testament the designation
'holy' was applied quite as much to the high priest's mitre or to the
sacrificial vessels of the Temple as it was to the people who used them.
It did not imply originally, and in the first place, moral qualities at
all, but simply that this person or that thing belonged to God. But then
you cannot belong to God unless you are like Him. There can be no
consecration to God except the heart is being purified. So the ordinary
meaning of holiness, as moral purity and cleanness from sin, necessarily
comes from the original meaning, separation and devotion to the service
of God.
Thus we get the whole significance of Christian holiness. We are to
belong to God, and to know that we do belong to Him. We are to be
separated from the mass of people and things that have no consciousness
of ownership and do not yield themselves up to Him for His use. But we
cannot belong to Him, and be devoted to His service, unless we are being
made day by day pure in heart, and like Him to whom we say that we
belong. A human being can only be God's by the surrender of heart and
will, and through the continual appropriation into his own character and
life, of righteousness and purity like that which belongs to God.
Holiness is God's stamp upon a man, His 'mark,' by which He says--This
man belongs to Me. As you write your name in a book, so God writes His
name on His property, and the name that He writes is the likeness of His
own character.
Note, again, that in God's church there is no aristocracy of sanctity,
nor does the name of saint belong only to those who live high above the
ordinary tumults of life and the secularities of daily duty. You may be
as true a saint in a factory--ay! and a far truer one--than in a
hermitage. You do not need to cultivate a mediæval or Roman Catholic
type of ascetic piety in order to be called saints. You do not need to
be amongst the select few to whom it is given here upon earth, but not
given without their own effort, to rise to the highest summits of holy
conformity with the divine will. But down amongst all the troubles and
difficulties and engrossing occupations of our secular work, you may be
living saintly lives; for the one condition of being holy is that we
should know whose we are and whom we serve, and we can carry the
consciousness of belonging to Him into every corner of the poorest, most
crowded, and most distracted life, recognising His presence and seeking
to do His will. The saint is the man who says, 'O Lord, truly I am Thy
servant; Thou hast loosed my bonds.' Because He has loosed my bonds, the
bonds that held me to my sins, He has therein fastened me with far more
stringent bonds of love to the sweet and free service of His redeeming
love. All His children are His saints.
The Old Testament ritual had one sacrifice which carried this truth in
it. It is the first prescribed in the Book of Leviticus, the ceremonial
book--namely, the burnt offering. Its especial meaning was this, that
the whole man is to be laid upon God's altar and there consumed in the
fire of a divine love. It began with expiation, as all sacrifices must,
and on the footing of expiation there followed the transformation, by
the fire of God, from gross earthliness into vapour and odour which
went up in wreaths of fragrance acceptable to God. So _we_ are to be
laid upon the divine altar. So, because we have been accepted in the
Beloved, and have received the atonement for our sins through His great
sacrifice, we are to be consecrated to His service and, touched by the
fire which He sends down, we are to be changed into a sweet odour
acceptable to Him as were 'the saints which are in Ephesus.'