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Text. —“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, be
seech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation where
with ye are called.”
‘‘But fornication and all uncleanness or covetous
ness, let it not be once named among you, as be
cometh saints.”
PUT these two texts together in order
to carry out the thought: “Walk worthy
of the calling wherewith ye are
called,” “as becometh saints.” This
word saint as found in the New Tes
tament is one of the biggest words in
it. If you have never studied it, it will
pay you. It will pay you as a Chris
tian to study this word, to see its
I
heights and depths. Indeed, the whole of the epis
tle to the Ephesians is an exposition of this word,
and it is beautiful to see how the book divides itself.
There are six chapters in the book. The first three
make up the first division. The second three make
up the second division. The first three chapters of
the book treat of what it is to be a saint, and the
last three treat of what it is to live a saint. So,
tn be and to live a saint is really the theme of the
entire epistle to the Ephesians. If I were asked
to state which of the two divisions of the book is
most important, I should say the first, for it is
decidedly more important to be right than to do
right. If there is to be any lack anywhere let it
be in our doing and not in our being, for if we are
right and are properly taught, we will soon know
how to do right, and will do it, but all the right
doing under the sun will never save until there is
right being to begin with.
But both phases of our subject are important. It
is exceedingly important that we should know what
it is to be a saint, and it is exceedingly important
that we should so live as becometh saints.
A WRONG CONCEPTION.
In studying the word saint you will be impressed
that there is a great deal of misunderstanding con
cerning it. I have never seen the misunderstand
ing of the word so clearly brought out as in the
works of the great masters in painting pictures of
saints. Most of the old masters you know lived
at a time and under an environment when Rome —
the Church of Rome —held almost universal sway,
and when the Romish idea of things was accepted
as the right and proper thing, and Rome’s idea of
a saint is a very different one from that which we
find in the Scriptures. Most of the pictures that
you see of the saints represent them as old, infirm
and careworn, dejected, perhaps disappointed, in
their expressions. The most hideous pictures that
I have ever seen in the great art galleries of the
world are the pictures intended to portray the idea
of sainthood, and I have invariably said, “Well, if
that is a saint, God save me from being a saint. 1
do not ever want to look like that. I look bad
enough as it is.” I have invariably said, as I have
seen these misrepresentations of sainthood, “I
would to God that I had the power to draw a pic
ture or paint one.” I think my first work would
be the picture of a saint, and I would certainly not
paint him as they do. I would rather paint him
as a great, vigorous, robust, healthy, normal man—
a man that you would expect to be tempted of the
devil at every turn of the road —a normal man, a
sure-enough man, but a man whose expression in
dicated that he had gained the victory over the
world, the flesh and the devil.
And you see the erroneous idea of sainthood also
standing out in the way the holy men of old, even
the ones in the Scripture, are called. For instance,
they are called “Saint Matthew,” “Saint Mark,”
“Saint Luke,” “Saint John,” “Saint Paul,”
“Saint Peter,” and the like. I would not take
from these holy men a single solitary thing that they
deserve, but in justice to the teaching of the Scrip
tures, I must say that these men have no more right
to be called saints than I have. And the only rea-
SAINTHOOD
Tabernacle Sermon by Reb. Len G. Rrought on, t D. V.
The Golden Age for December 12, 1907.
Stenographically reported for The Golden Age.—Copyright applied for.
son in the world why they are called saints is be
cause there has crept even into the minds of the
translators of the Bible the Romish idea of saint
hood, hence no one ever hears me say, “Saint
Matthew,” “Saint Paul,” etc. To be sure, we are
all saints, but if I address them as saints, I must
address you as saints.
WHO ARE SAINTS?
What do the Scriptures have to say about a
saint, and what it takes to constitute a saint? The
Book of Ephesians clearly tells us: To start with,
a saint is any saved man or woman. That is what
it takes to make a saint. The blood of Jesus Christ
shed on Calvary, appropriated by faith on the part
of the individual, inducts him at once into the realm
of sainthood. And he is just as much a saint at
that time as at any other time or other condition
under which he can possibly be placed. It is true,
of course, that he must live as becometh a saint,
and it is true in many instances and in most in
stances that we do not, but that does not change
the fact of what we are. We are saints because
of what has been done for us in the shed blood of
Jesus Christ. A man can be a citizen of the United
States, but he may not so live as becometh a citizen
of the United States, but his living does -not change
the fact that he is a -citizen of this country. A man
comes from Europe and takes out naturalization
papers, thus renouncing his former citizenship, and
he may, after that, not live like an American citi
zen, but that does not change the fact that he is a
citizen of the stars and stripes. A man transfers
his citizenship from the devil to Christ. He is no
longer a citizen of the devil. He has renounced
him, and from that time on is a citizen of Christ.
He is a citizen of a new country. He may not so
live as becometh a citizen of his new country. He
may not so live as becometh saints, but he is never
theless from the day that he yields himself to Christ
a saint, and he must so be taught as that he will fill
the exalted position into which he has been called
as he emerges from the kingdom of darkness into the
kingdom of light. That is what makes a man a
saint. v
But what is it to be a saint? In these first three
chapters of the Book of Ephesians the Apostle Paul
is clearly outlining the answer to this question. In
.the first place, to be a saint is to be God’s property.
In the second place, it is to be God’s workmanship.
In the third place, it is to be God’s habitation.
That is our foundation in this first three chapters.
First, a saint is God’s property. He is God’s prop
erty from the moment that he says, “Yes” to God.
He is God’s property both soul and body. There
isn’t a muscle that quivers, nor a nerve that tingles
that does not belong to God. There isn’t a drop
of his blood that does not belong to God. He is
God’s property in himself. He has bought with a
price. The blood of Jesus was the price. He ac
cepted the transaction. He voluntarily entered
upon it. He sold out to God and is no longer his
own. He belongs to his Purchaser.
God’s property. He may not be God’s posses
sion, but not being God’s possession does not change
the fact that he is still God’s property. In many
instances men are not God’s possession, but the fact
that they are not God’s possession does not change
the fact that they are God’s property. I have an
overcoat; it is mine; I bought it and paid for it.
A few years ago somebody came into my house and
took it, and I presume is wearing it today some
where. That coat is my property today, but it is on
some negro’s back, or somebody else’s back. I
have at least twenty-five or thirty good umbrellas
that I bought and paid for, but they are not in my
possession. They are still my property, though
somebody else uses and possesses them. I have
about a barrel of lead-pencils that are mine, but
they are not in my possession. They are in the
hands of hundreds of people, as doubtless this one
I have is not my own.
Let us properly understand this great question,
because there is wrapped up in it a tremendous
principle that is worthy our getting hold of. God’s
property does not depend upon your conduct. You
may be God’s property and still be the devil’s pos
session, and the one great effort on the part of the
church with respect to Christian men and women,
men and women already saved, is to get them to
realize this fact, so that they will bring their lives
up to the privilege that they have in Christ; that is,
to the point where they will renounce the possession
of the devil, and let God be possessor as well as
owner; that they may come to the point where, as
He owns our faculties, He may possess them. As
he owns our brains, He may possess them. As He
owns our hearts, He may possess them. That our
bodies may be wholly and absolutely possessed by
God. That is what we want to do with the church.
That is where God’s church needs to live; but, alas,
I am sorry to -say that it is away down yonder in
the devil’s territory that many of us are content to
live.
GOD’S INVESTMENT.
God’s property not only are we, but we are God’s
workmanship. God, owning His property, under
takes to work it out to the best advantage. That
is what it means. God takes us as saved men and
women, His property, and undertakes to work out
through us that which is the very best for us to be.
God undertakes in this respect to do what every
business man here is doing today. He has a pos
session. His business is to take that possession,
that property, and so work it as to make it yield
the largest fruit. So with the business man. His
business is to so work his investment, think of it,
labor with it, as to make that investment result
in the largest dividend that can possibly be brought
out of it. He is the best business man and the most
sought after business man who can take the small
est amount of property and turn it to the best pos
sible income. The world is hunting for that man.
Every department of life is after that man. And
that is exactly what God undertakes to do. That
is what He is in the world so take His prop
erty and so work it and so manipulate it as that
his property —your life and mine, if we are Chris
tians —may result in the largest possible dividend,
and the larger the dividend the more the honor to
the workman. The larger the profits, the more the
world sees to honor and to glorify the workman, and
my brother, the poorer the material God has to work
upon, the better opportunity it is for God to make
out of it that which will glorify His name. Let
no man, therefore, think that because he is a small
property, a small investment, an investment so small
that the average business man would overlook it,
let him not imagine that God overlooks it. God is
just as anxious to work upon the property of the
one-talent man as upon the property of the ten
talent man. What God is after is to show His
handiwork. That can be done as easily in the man
of small talent as in the man of great talent, and
sometimes, I think, more so. If we be but
the one-talent man, let us not imagine that God
despises that property and will allow it to grow up
in weeds and return no dividend, while He goes out
to cultivate the fertile valleys. That is not God’s
way of doing. It might be man’s, but not God’s.
He is more just than that. Besides, He is not after
the large dividend, so much for its sake, as for
revealing to the world His glory, and that can be
done upon the man with the small talent as easily
as the man with the large.
God’s property. God’s workmanship. What an
exalted privilege that lifts us into. To think that,
as a child of God, I am God’s workmanship. That
God is at work upon me, working out through me
and for me that which is best for Himself. To see
what I mean, take that beautiful figure of the pot
ter and the clay and you have it. The potter mold
ing and shaping the clay. I have been in that great
pottery in London, the next to the largest in the
world, perhaps the largest for the amount of work
