Being a Saint

A co-worker told me yesterday that he found out I wasn’t a “Mormon” anymore.  Knowing his more standard Christian view of saints, I jokingly answered, yes, we’re actually saints now!  He responded by saying that he hoped not, for the only saints he knows of are the dead ones.  I tried to briefly explain that we use the term “saints” quite differently from most of Christianity.  Saints, for us, are not only those who have lived extraordinary lives for Christ and then died; but they are all those who are now seeking to live lives patterned after the Savior.  As far as I can tell, the scriptural usage of the word saints is in line with how we use it in the restored Church today: we call ourselves Latter-day Saints because we are in the last days and seeking to follow the Savior like the saints—the followers of Christ—in the meridian of time did. 

                It is clear from the epistles of the New Testament that the followers of Christ after His ascension were called saints.  We usually think of them as being called “Christian” but that word only appears twice in the New Testament; the word saint on the other hand appears over 60 times.  And it is evident that the word applied to large bodies of followers of Christ, not to an elect few.  For example, we read about the “saints at Jerusalem” and “the saints which dwelt at Lydda” (Acts 9:13, 32).  Paul addressed many epistles to the saints of various regions; he wrote to “all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints,” and “the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints,” and “the saints which are at Ephesus,” and “the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi” (Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:2, Ephesus 1:1, Philippians 1:1).  Paul wrote in particular about “a collection for the saints” that he gathered on his missionary journey for “the poor saints which are at Jerusalem” as he gathered money from various churches to help them (Romans 15:26, 16:1).  Saints were not angelic-like beings for early members of the Church, but they were all those who sought to “keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus” (Revelation 14:12).

                Modern scripture helps us understand better what it means to be a saint.  In the Book of Mormon, Jacob wrote, “But, behold, the righteous, the saints of the Holy One of Israel, they who have believed in the Holy One of Israel, they who have endured the crosses of the world, and despised the shame of it” (2 Nephi 9:18).  So saints encompass those who believe in the Savior and endure the crosses of the world they face because of that faith.  In the Doctrine and Covenants the Lord suggested that part of being a saint also involves helping those in need: “But behold, they have not learned to be obedient to the things which I required at their hands, but are full of all manner of evil, and do not impart of their substance, as becometh saints, to the poor and afflicted among them” (D&C 105:3).  Perhaps the best definition of a saint came from King Benjamin’s words, as he described how a saint is the antithesis of the natural man, that we become a “saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him” (Mosiah 3:19).  Being a saint should mean for all of us in the restored Church that indeed we are seeking to be changed by the atonement of Christ and to become the men and women He wants us to become.