Saint Candyce?

Have you heard that I am a saint? Many in our culture would define "saint" as someone who does much good and is rewarded after death with this special title. Or we may think of a "saint" as someone who is exceptionally virtuous, as in, "That woman is such a saint." The actual Greek word translated "saint" in the Bible, hagios, has a different meaning than this common usage. It means "separated unto God." In the Bible, every believer is a saint, set apart to glorify God in all that we do.

So how does this affect us? How do saints behave? In Respectable Sins: Confronting The Sins We Tolerate by Jerry Bridges, the author writes:

"When I was serving as an officer in the U.S. Navy some fifty years ago, there was an expression: 'conduct unbecoming an officer.' That expression covered anything from minor offenses resulting in a reprimand to major ones requiring a court martial. But the expression was more than a description of aberrant behavior; it was a statement that the conduct was inconsistent with that expected of a military officer. The officer so described had failed to live up to his responsibility to act as an officer should act. Perhaps we might do well to adopt a similar expression for believers: 'conduct unbecoming a saint.' Such an expression would pull us up short, wouldn't it? When we gossip or become impatient or get angry, we could remind ourselves that our conduct is unbecoming a saint... We are living inconsistently with our calling."

Do you think of yourself as a saint? If so, the next time you and I are tempted to sin, we would do well to consider our calling and act accordingly.