When Paul Calls You a Saint?

He's referencing the Priestly class in the OT as now applying to the entire church rather than just to a clan of Israel. This may have been a shocker to hear in his letters as most of the people listening (Jew or Gentile) would understand that priests are a "special" class of people and not a title you hand out liberally. This could have made Paul's ongoing statement quite scandalous. My first thought is that it is somewhat of a rhetorical device, to call members of the church saints, to shock people out of their comfortable paradigms. That's just the rhetorical approach, but now some other considerations.


The first thing that comes to mind is that the priestly function was to, in a way, sacralize the world around them (make common things sacred). In the OT, there are three different classifications usually assigned to the "things" in the word - Holy, Common & Profane. 


The Holy was to be separated from the Common and protected from the Profane. 


The Common was to be kept from the Profane. Just because something was common or profane or holy didn't mean that its intrinsic value was in question or that it was necessarily intrinsically bad or good. It was a classification system that allowed the OT priests to uphold the Law. The priest's vocation was to uphold these categories and enforce them in the life of the Israelite community to maintain their fidelity and direction of worship towards Yahweh.

I can imagine that that role has been transferred to us in the NT church under the New Covenant because part of our role is to make everything "spiritual" and to be holy as he is holy. Now our being holy is not something that we depend upon another human being to do for us, other than Christ (our High Priest), but at the same time we are called into Christ's priestly role by co-priesting with him as we are also called to co-reign with him. Our priestly function is deep and complex in this world and takes a lifetime to discover and unpack as well as practice.

Making everything spiritual seems to be the function of "re-mythologizing" the world. C.S. Lewis did much of that in his works - to re-enchant the world with the enchantment that God meant for it to have. 


Sin has "dis-enchanted" the world from its original and potential beauty and potential towards flourishing. Our role as priests is re-sacralize the world and to give order to what has no order - to sacralize that which has been de-sacralized - to re-enchant a dis-enchanted world. This comes in forms of healing, renewal of all sorts, proper ordering of relationships, economics, social orders, systems, personal lives and communities, etc. 


When we talk about salvation and sanctification - we aren't just talking about getting saved and becoming a more moral person - we are talking about being re-ordered back into a way of being that we were meant for along with the rest of Creation and the Cosmos. It's all integrated. 


Romans 8 - creation groans in eager expectation for the revealing of the sons of God so that it can experience its redemption - because we are all connected - for good and bad. Once that process is begun in our lives, we are then called into a deeper participation in the life of God's re-ordering of the world as we are being re-ordered into the "image" we already bear.

Ordering the world to re-sacralize it is a macro-activity of the historic priestly role in the OT to order the world for the Israelites based upon the Law. Now the job is extended to the whole world through the NT church with the presence of the Holy Spirit and the power, authority and commission given to us by Christ in Matthew 28. 


So, what are we called to sacralize in the world around us and how should we attempt to do so carefully and respectfully?