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See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called the children of God. You may be seated. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, dear Saints of God, when we hear that word, when you hear that word, what do you think of? Saint. There’s a lot of things that we could think of, a lot of definitions. I want to meditate on three of them today. Because I think that it’s a broad word, a good Christian word, and a really helpful word for us to think about, especially on All Saints Day.
I think we might think when we hear the word saints of all those heroes of the church in the past, the apostles and the prophets and those teachers and fathers and mothers in the church that have done great things, the martyrs who died confessing the faith. We also think, though, and especially today on the Feast of All Saints, we think about those who have died and gone to heaven, those who are resting in glory, and in a few minutes we’ll pray, thanking God for their witness and ringing the bell for those who died in the Lord’s name in our midst this last 12 months.
But there’s a third way that the Bible talks about saints, and it, in fact, is the most common way the Bible uses it, and it simply means Christian, Holy One. So we’ll think about all three of these. First, the heroes of the past. Probably All Saints Day came about because in the ancient church they wanted to give thanks to God and commemorate those who were heroic in the faith and who confessed the faith even to the point of death. So a lot of times they would remember the martyrs, and they would remember them on their heavenly birthday, that is the day that they died.
Isn’t that a beautiful way to think about the day that you die, your heavenly birthday? And so they would gather—sometimes they would gather at the grave of the martyrs or in the catacombs of the martyrs. Sometimes they would even build chapels over the tombs of the martyrs, and they would celebrate on the anniversary of their death. They would celebrate their faith and trust in the Lord. Now, this became such a common practice and so widespread that the calendar was almost full, and they couldn’t find other days for other saints, so they had to pick a day for all the other saints. That’s All Saints Day. It kind of piles them all into one.
Now this practice got pretty out of hand in the Middle Ages in a couple of ways. Number one, the ideas that the saints were somehow more spiritual than everyone else, closer to God than everyone else, that the saints were those who had filled up their good works in this life, so they had extra good works and super spiritual powers. In fact, one of the ways that you were canonized in the Roman Church, that you became a saint, was that you would perform two miracles in your life and then two miracles were performed by your relics, your clothes or your skeleton or something like this after you had died.
So the people were going on pilgrimages, and they were gathering together bones, and they were doing all this sort of stuff. In fact, what grew out of that was even prayers to the saints, that the saints could offer more efficacious prayers than we could, so you intercede and ask the saints to intercede for us. And this was all going on, especially at the time of the Reformation; it was part of the conversation of the Reformation where the Lutherans said, “Now that is not good.” It’s at best not commanded by the Bible, and we find no example in the Bible, but at worst it starts to press towards idolatry.
Instead of trusting in the Lord for all that we need and instead of praying to Him, we’re praying to Mary and to all the other saints asking them to intercede on our behalf. But it wasn’t as if the Lutherans said, “Well, we want nothing to do with the saints at all.” No, in fact, they said that there is a way that we truly do give them honor. In fact, there’s a three-fold honor that we give to the saints, and that’s the honor of thanks and of strengthening faith and also of instruction. We could say thanks, encouragement, and instruction.
The first is that we thank God. We thank God for the saints that went before us. We thank God for Paul and the work that he did to establish the New Testament church and the letters that he wrote. We thank God for Peter and his suffering and his preaching and the works that he did. We thank God for St. Augustine and for the Lutheran Reformers and for all the saints that had gone before us. I mean, Adam and Noah and David and Moses and Isaiah the prophet and the saints that went before us who established this church. We thank the Lord for their work and for using them to bless us.
But second, and most importantly, when we remember the saints, remember that we are seeing examples of the Lord’s mercy. When we remember all the people that came before us in the church, you know what you’re remembering? You’re remembering sinners who broke the commands of God, who fell short of His glory, who needed, like you, His mercy, and who received it. So, we remember King David and his sin and his repentance and his forgiveness. We remember Moses the murderer who was restored to his office and blessed by God. We remember Peter who denied the Lord and was restored by him on the shores of Galilee three times. “Feed my sheep, feed my lambs, comfort my sheep.”
We remember the saints as examples of the Lord’s kindness and love and the forgiveness of all of our sins. And we think, “If the Lord could forgive them, surely He can forgive me.” Right. That’s true. He can forgive you. And the third honor that we give to the saints is that we follow their example, especially according to their vocation. As husbands and fathers, we look to those saints that went before us as examples of what it means to be a good husband and father. As wives and mothers, we look to those saints that went before us as wives and mothers. As those who are students, we look to those who were astute and went before us.
We follow after their example, first of faith and then of love and their various vocations, and we strive to live after them. They are, after all, our heroes. And remember that you know everything you need to know about a person if you know who their heroes are. That’s the life that we’re striving for, the life that our heroes have. And your heroes and mine, the heroes of the Christian church, are the martyrs who confess their faith to the end, who suffered and died for the name of Jesus with joy, peace, and patience.
So we honor the saints. That’s the first way to think about saints: the heroes that went before us. The second way to think about saints is not just the heroes of the faith, but all those that we love who died in the Lord’s name and who are now resting in glory. This is really what the business of the liturgy and the church is today: that we remember those who died, and this is important—we do not forget those who went before us. We continue to love them. We continue to mourn for them.
In fact, remember this: that mourning is the shape that love takes when the object of our love is absent from us. So we mourn our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who died in the faith that went before us. Some of you are mourning spouses and children and friends and family. All of you are mourning the brothers and sisters that we have sent ahead of us to heaven in the last few months and years. We mourn, but we do not mourn as those who mourn with no hope. We do not speak of the dead as though they were and are no more. That’s wrong. These are the ones who live in Christ. These are the ones who have passed from death to life.
These are the ones who are gathered before the Lord’s throne in glory, who are singing His praises and rejoicing in His kindness. The Bible gives us a couple of glimpses of how it is with the saints in heaven right now. And we had one of those in the first lesson from Revelation chapter 7. It’s a beautiful picture. They’re standing before the Lord, they’re waving palm branches, and they’re clothed in these beautiful white robes.
And as John sees this vision, the angel says to him, “Who are all of these?” And John says back to the angel, “I hope that you know,” because he doesn’t, and the angel does. The angel says, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” clothed in Christ’s righteousness, in Christ’s perfection, not in their own works and their own efforts and their own endeavors and all this kind of stuff, no, clothed in the robes that are made white by the blood of Jesus. That’s the only thing that cleanses the heart and the conscience and the life and everything else that we need.
So that those who have died in the Lord are now—can you imagine it?—they are out of the reach of death. The grave has no more claim over them. Sin and sickness and sorrow, they’re gone. We know that for us to live is Christ, to die is gain, and those who have died in the Lord’s name have entered into that gain, and we will enter there soon. It is appointed, and I suppose it’s helpful on All Saints to remember that we’re gonna die. It’s appointed for man once to die and then to be judged, and that will be true for each one of us if the Lord doesn’t return.
We’ll die and we’ll face the judgment of God, and on that day, you and I will stand completely unafraid, completely at peace, without a thought or concern in all the world. It’s true that you’re a sinner. It’s true you’ve broken God’s law. It’s true you deserve His wrath and eternal punishment. Me too. But all of that has been paid by Jesus. You are in robes, white robes, cleansed by the blood of the Lamb.
And this, dear saints, is really what we want to talk about when it comes to being a saint. Because to be a saint, in the biblical idea, in the biblical use of the word, is simply to be a Christian. It’s to be baptized. It is to be holy, not by works or endeavors or efforts. It is to be holy by the forgiveness of sins, and you are holy. When the Lord looks at you, I know this is hard to believe, because when you look at yourself, you don’t see a holy one. I mean, I don’t—maybe if you do look in the mirror and you say, “Now there’s a saint,” maybe we should talk.
You look at yourself and you do not see a saint, and you probably look at the person next to you and you don’t see a saint there either. You look at me and you don’t see a saint. But the Lord looks at you, and He sees you as holy. He already sees you dressed in this white robe. He sees all your sins washed away. He sees you already in the radiance of eternal life. John says it like this—it’s one of the most beautiful texts. We have to write this with gold words on our hearts: First John 3:1. “Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us that we should be called the children of God, and beloved, we are.”
You are God’s children now, and what you will be has not yet appeared, but when He appears in glory, we will appear like Him. You are God’s children now, beloved of heaven, forgiven of all of your sins, adopted into His family, given the promise of a life that will never end. The Lord looks at you and delights in you and smiles at you. And that is what you have to be afraid of on the Judgment Day—the smiling face of Jesus, which is nothing at all to fear.
I know that you’re a sinner, and you know that I’m a sinner, but the Lord Jesus is pleased to call you His saints. And so you are. God be praised. Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord.
