What is a saint?

Most people think of saints as super-spiritual people who live far removed from the mundane affairs of life. How common it is to hear even Christians say, Well, after all, I’m not a saint. But as Paul and as the Bible use that word, you cannot be a Christian unless you are a saint; being a Christian makes you, by definition, a saint. Now, here we need to consider the Roman Catholic teaching, because undoubtedly, the Roman Catholic view exerts a great influence on how most people think about this word. Saints, according to Rome, are those few whose great spiritual achievements caused them to be set above the church as models and intercessors. That last designation is important because according to Rome, the saints, after they die, they not only go to heaven but they pray for us there. We pray to them and they pray on our behalf. Let me quote the most recent Roman Catholic Catechism: We can and should ask them [that is the saints] to intercede for us. And so people select patron saints and they give saints’ names to their children, and in that way we are assured of the saints’ intercession. They do not cease to intercede with the Father for us (we are told), and notice: as they proffer the merits which they acquired on Earth. Well, under that doctrine, saints are adored, they are venerated, they are trusted for salvation. One commonly finds Roman Catholics praying to saints instead of to God, seeking help from and offering praise to mere dead human beings!

Now, Rome will parse this very finely; they try to make a distinction between worship and veneration. I do not think it is a meaningful distinction. In fact, right on the very surface of this practice is idolatry. Furthermore, the idea that anyone may come to God on the basis of their merits, much less with excess merits as Rome teaches, what an offense that is to the biblical teaching of sin and of justification through faith in Christ alone, by denying, among other things, the sufficiency of Christ as our Saviour and Intercessor. It flies in the face of Paul’s plain teaching in 1 Timothy 2:5, that there is one God and there is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.¹

Dr Richard D. Phillips