Anointed into Holy Sainthood
Anointed into Holy Sainthood.
“If you consult your own soul with complete honesty, you will see that there is one and only one reason why you are not even now a saint. You do not wholly want to be.” (William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life).
ANOINT: Applying water, oil or another blessed substance by pouring, smearing, dripping, rubbing in, or sprinkling. This can be applied to the surface of something or the skin of a person, often as part of a religious or ceremonial act. signifying their consecration or appointment to a particular role. To anoint someone can mean to choose or designate that person for a particular position or task, or a formal ceremony which officially dedicates that person and sets him/her apart for God’s purposes and responsibilities, or even more of an informal gesture that gives a person honor, respect, and gratitude. To anoint someone is to consecrate a person for duties that are in service to God’s will. To anoint someone means to sanctify that person, declaring him/her to be a saint, or “holy one.” To anoint someone is to separate that person from the dishonorable, the profane, the common, and formally assign that person to a godly purpose and a sacred function.
Christians: Since Christ means “Anointed One,” then it follows that “Christian” means “anointed ones.” All who follow Jesus are anointed ones who are hidden “in” Christ the Anointed One. All Christian believers who are “inside” Jesus share His anointing and partake of His nature. We are anointed by the Spirit of the Holy Anointed One.
SAINT: The basic meaning of the term saint is “holy one,” which is from the Latin word “sanctus.” A saint is one who has been anointed by the Holy Spirit, enabled to grow in “set-apartness” for God’s special purposes. A saint is one who is officially dedicated to God in order to increase one’s usefulness to Him. A saint is one who has been spiritually sainted by virtue of being hidden inside Christ, the Anointed One, and also practically sainted by virtue of choosing the distinctive life of growing in goodness, purity and reflecting God’s character. A saint is one who has surrendered to the Holy Spirit and then empowered to mature in living out the gospel values of the Anointed One Jesus. A saint is one who has officially declared an intention to remain loyal and faithful to the Anointed One, separated from the ungodly in identity by choosing to be distinctive in personal character and life purpose.
HOLY: One who has been anointed by the Holy Spirit, set apart for God’s service and assigned to a sacred purpose; a person who has been sanctified, consecrated, dedicated to a sacred usefulness; one who has been empowered by the Holy Spirit to grow in the holy nature of the Anointed One; one who has been spiritually separated from all that contradicts the character of God, and instead is united to the vary character of Jesus Messiah.
So what is a saint, a holy one, an anointed one? A willing member of the holy priesthood of all believers; someone who is determined to be in the Lord’s sanctification process; a follower of Jesus who is intentionally living into holiness, set apart for service to God; an apprentice to the Anointed One who accepts being assigned by God for a sacred purpose; a humble student of Jesus who wisely reminds others of God’s presence in the world; an imperfect person who is designated to represent a perfect God; a spiritually anointed one whose behavior is increasingly separate from the sinful and worldly; a Christ-follower who is engaged in the process of being cleansed and purified in order to increase one’s usefulness to God; a believer whose life is marked by growth in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Messiah. “It is God Himself who has anointed us. And He is constantly strengthening us in joint fellowship with the Anointed One, in union with Christ. He knows we are His since He has stamped His seal of love over our hearts and has given us the Holy Spirit as the security deposit, His guarantee of the fulfillment of His promise.” (2 Corinthians 1:21-22, TPT and Amplified Bible).
Jewish Roots to a Holy Anointing. To be anointed into the holy sainthood is to refer way back in the Hebrew Bible to how believers were sanctified, purified, made holy in the liturgical sense. Faithful Jews would need to undergo a ritual cleansing in the baths outside the Temple before entrance into the Temple to worship. It was a sign of purification, setting them apart to worship God in the beauty of holiness. The ritual bath cleansed the believers and symbolically separated them from impurity. So to be holy and purified in the New Testament sense was to harken back and remind the believers in Christ that they needed to be anointed, purified and cleansed in the Christian successor to the ritual bath, Holy Baptism, in order to follow Jesus. They needed to be officially set apart in dedication to their holy God by submitting to an outer cleansing that represented an intentional inner purification.
Kept Clean. When Jesus washed His disciples’ feet in John 13, Jesus made a striking remark, “Unless I wash you, you won’t belong to me.” (13:8). Jesus is making a spiritual statement here, pointing to Holy Baptism, and that unless He has totally cleansed us, we are neither a part of His life nor a part of what He is doing. Through accepting the Anointed One into one’s life, and believing in His death and resurrection, Jesus has fully cleansed His followers. They have taken the ritual bath. As the Message translation puts it, “If you’ve had a bath in the morning, you only need your feet washed now and you’re clean from head to toe. My concern, you understand, is holiness, not hygiene.” (MSG). So those of us who have been purified through our Baptism in Jesus and anointing in the Spirit, need for Him to keep washing our feet. We need to keep ourselves set apart for Him, to remain sacred and holy and pure as we live into Him. We need to keep ourselves clean, dedicated to God, set apart for Him through His foot washings of repentance, confession and living into the fullness of His Holy Spirit. We need to grow in becoming “slaves to righteous living in order to become holy and sacred.” (Romans 6:19). For “God has called us to live holy lives, not impure lives.” (1 Thess. 4:7). When believers repent of our sins, humbly confess allegiance to the Anointed One, and surrender to the Holy Spirit, God is in effect washing our feet and keeping us sacred, holy and pure. Unless He continues to wash us, we will not grow in holiness.
“Because of His glory and goodness, He has given us great and precious promises, so that through them you may escape from the world’s corruption due to disordered passions and human desires, and may become partakers of the divine nature, participants in His nature, sharing in the divine life of God.” (2 Peter 1:3-4).
God’s discipline is always good for us, He corrects us throughout our lives for our own good, so that we may share in His holiness.” (Hebrews 12:10).
SHARING GOD’S HOLINESS: Being set apart from sin and its consequences; growing in those aspects of divine nature that God shares with believers; being partners with Christ in His divinity because of His partnership with us in our humanity; cultivating divine characteristics because of intimate fellowship with God; God’s image being restored in us because of our union with Him; the result of participating in the life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; acquiring God’s character through His spiritual DNA in our heart and mind; dwelling inside God as He dwells inside us.
Setting the Bar High. We all have a decision to make. Do you want to live a good life, or a holy life? Do you want to exist as merely a good person, or a sanctified person? Many are searching for a life that has some teeth in it, a life that is demanding, that takes a meaningful commitment. Is being generically good, good enough for a fulfilling life? If you are basically a good person, you work hard, you wouldn’t intentionally hurt anyone, and you follow the rules for the most part, is that a high enough calling for you? The truth is that if you are satisfied with being a good person, with what amounts to a secular righteousness, you are in danger of setting the bar too low as far as life’s purpose. Do you want something more compelling that ordinary goodness in your life? A long train of spiritual heroes recommend you think about holiness, being set apart for the Master’s use. Maybe you should consider the idea of becoming an anointed saint.
Myths and Counterfeits. Sainthood has a P.R. problem. There are so many myths and counterfeits and misconceptions, the world wouldn’t know a true saint if it tripped over one. A typical image of a saint is a holier-than-thou, self-righteous, fun-hating stiff. A saint is viewed as a domesticated, tamed, lifeless person who loves to heap guilt on others. People make the mistake of believing that sainthood is reserved for the super-spiritual, the hyper-Christian, the pious mystic untainted by the world. With impressions like these, who would ever want to be anointed, who would choose to be a saint?
Eugene Peterson, in his book The Jesus Way, tries to set the record straight. “Holiness is wild and undomesticated. Holiness is an interior fire, a passion for living for God, a capacity for exuberance in living out the life of God in the details of our day-to-day lives. Holy is not a word that drains the blood out of life. It’s a word that gets the blood pumping, pulsing life through our veins and putting color in our cheeks.”
A Sacred Image. Anointed saints are not perfect or somehow above the riffraff of the world. There is a humble obedience in sainthood that shapes our life, allowing us to remain in the world but not conformed to the world. If we truly want to lead a sacred, holy life, our identity will be defined by the Lord. Our primary identity will not be defined by the world’s priorities. Being sacred and holy is a way of life that is shaped by God’s life in which we will be holy because He is holy (1 Peter 1:14-16; Lev. 11:45 and 20:26). Being a holy saint means we live a life of mercy, compassion, justice. Once we are anointed in the Spirit, we begin to embrace the fact that our life, and everyone else’s, is sacred, made in the image of God. Saints aren’t afraid to claim their central identity as someone being remade into the image of Jesus Messiah. Holy ones don’t intend to define themselves in other identities, whether gender identity, sexual identity, or even racial/ethnic identity. Anointed ones recognize their central identity as being made in the image of a loving, personal Creator. Saints embrace holiness as the destiny and purpose of life.
In the world, but not conformed to the world. Just as God is distant from the world, but is still present and active within it, so will the anointed ones. Saints have a “calibrated distance” (Rabbi Sacks) from the world, but are still active within it. Just as our holy God is set apart from the unholy, we will grow in our anointed dedication to Him. Just as God is distinctively pure, being a holy saint means that we are in His purifying process through the Holy Spirit who has anointed us.
Good is not good enough. We will fulfill God’s purposes for our lives when we are willing to be put to special use for Him. We are called to go beyond good and become a holy saint, set apart for a sacred and unique use. When we intend to be faithful to a holy God through the power of His Spirit, we will live our lives designated for a particular purpose, an eternal destiny. A good life is ordinary, a holy life is exceptional. To be naturally good doesn’t even compare to being spiritually extraordinary. A good life will blend in, a sainted life will be distinctive. If you’re afraid of being different, of standing apart, then an anointed life will prove difficult. As Christian author Flannery O’Conner once said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.”
Priesthood. Is this what the Lord meant when He told Moses at Mt. Sinai that the Jews, and by extension later, the Christians, were to be a kingdom of priests, set apart and holy to the Lord? Isaiah picked up on this theme in Isaiah 61:6, and John did as well in Rev. 1:6, 5:10 and 20:6. And then there is Peter telling us that we believers are a part of a holy priesthood, in 1 Peter 2:5. Each believer, man or woman, boy or girl, is a priest, dedicated to sacred actions, such as representing God to the people, interceding for the people to God, offering ourselves as living sacrifices, blessing the world. Each believer dedicated to God is anointed by the Spirit to be holy, to be a sacred priest set apart to serve God. In Scripture, priests were not perfect by any means, they were simply designated for God’s service.
Anointing our Wardrobe. Choosing a humble holiness is like picking out a new wardrobe. You take off the old you and put on the new you. When we decide to clothe ourselves in Christ, the Anointed One, our High Priest, we have intentionally decided to spiritually wear priestly garments of splendor. We have chosen to wrap ourselves in a robe of righteousness, Christ’s righteousness, clothing ourselves in truth and goodness. Accepting Biblical truth sets us apart and so makes us holy. Scriptural truth is our clothes closet in which we select our wardrobe. It is important that we anointed ones choose a new wardrobe, not a mere costume. A costume is something we wear when we want to play a part, when we want to appear good for appearance’s sake. Putting on Christ the Anointed One means our outer life of virtue matches our inner life of faith. Our new wardrobe is a clothing line designed and stitched by God Himself. The irony is that when we put on Christ and His goodness, we end up going beyond mere goodness.
The Best Robe. In considering this question of a good life vs. an anointed holy life, of clothing ourselves in truth, some of us might be feeling shame and guilt. Perhaps we have had weak moments, maybe we were ignorant of the Jesus in Scripture. Perhaps we haven’t even lived a particularly good life, no less a sacred and holy life dedicated to God’s use. Please remember the story of the Prodigal Son… What’s the first thing the waiting Father shouts out when his long-lost child returns? “Find the best robe and put it on him!” (Luke 15:22). We know what that robe is all about. It is a holy robe, a sacred garment that won’t wear out. The Father is offering an undeserved and anointed robe that enjoys family origins from the Father’s house. It is the robe of Christ the Anointed One, of forgiveness and grace and new life. The Father’s robe is a sign of sacred holiness that we all put on when we approach the Father in humility and ask for His anointing. His robe is a holy robe, and we are all invited to put it on and clothe ourselves in Jesus.
Generically Good? Is a good life good enough? Perhaps it’s time to set ourselves apart and become a part of the holy sainthood. Maybe it’s time to be anointed and dedicated to the Master’s use, like a vessel of honor in the Lord’s well-stocked kitchen (2 Timothy 2:20-21). Perhaps it’s time to seek a sanctified and holy life, a consecrated life, the life of the saint, a member of the anointed ones. Maybe being generically good isn’t good enough.
“All of us, if we only knew it, are on a hunt for the holy, for a life that cannot be reduced to the way we look or what we do or what others think of us. We are after something – more life than we get simply by eating three meals a day, getting a little exercise, and having a decent job. We’re after the God-originated and God-shaped life – a holy life.” (Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way).