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This is the first installment in the 1517 articles series, “What Makes a Saint?”
“God doesn’t find the saint; he makes the saint, and he does it with a word.” -Jim Nestingen
What makes a saint? It’s a question that feels religious and even pious in all the wrong ways. We tend to think in Roman Catholic terms: people canonized for heroic virtue, spiritual discipline, moral superiority, and lives lived full of exceptional service. But the biblical answer is entirely different. A saint is not someone who has achieved holiness by works or any kind of merit. A saint is someone who has been declared righteous solely by faith on account of the person and saving work of Christ for them.
This is the scandal of the cross and the comfort of the gospel. To paraphrase theologian Gerhard Forde, a saint is not one who climbs the ladder to heaven. A saint is one for whom the ladder was thrown down, cross-shaped, bloodied, and planted in the dirt of Golgotha.
Justification by Faith is What Makes a Saint
In Romans 4, Paul writes: “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5).
God justifies the “ungodly.” That means the sinner, the failure, the doubter, the addict, the prideful, and the ashamed alike. The saint is not someone without sin but someone whose sin has been put on Christ alone and then given the righteousness of Christ as his own. This is what we mean by justification: God declares the sinner righteous solely for the sake of Christ, apart from works, through faith, and that declaration is not a process but a verdict. It’s the difference between “try harder” and "it is finished.”
Martin Luther puts it succinctly: “Thus a Christian is righteous and a sinner at the same time, holy and profane, an enemy of God and a child of God.” [1] This is the joyful contradiction of Christian life as being lived out as simul iustus et peccator, at the same time righteous and sinner. The righteousness of the saint is not their own. It is imputed, alien, given by grace through faith.
Saints Are Spoken into Being
How do you receive this righteousness so that you might be justified? Jim Nestingen’s insight rings true: God makes saints by preaching them into existence. The same God who said, “Let there be light,” also says, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” He says, “Take, eat. This is my body, given for you.” He says, “I forgive you all your sins.”
A saint is created by that word, not by their doing, but by God’s doing. The gospel doesn’t advise or explain, it gives. And what it gives is Christ for you. This is why Steve Paulson always reminds us: “You need a preacher!” God’s preached word is what makes justification a declared reality. Without the external word, we’re left rummaging around in our own hearts for assurance, which is just another form of law. But when the preacher says, “I forgive you,” that’s not advice—it’s a resurrection.
Lowell Green is helpful here: “The righteousness of Christ is not something that God pours into the heart in such a way that it becomes a part of man’s nature, but it remains outside of him, and is grasped only by faith. The Word does not change the substance of man; rather, it changes his status before God.”[2]
Not Progress, but Promise
Too many Christians today speak of sainthood and sanctification in terms of moral progress. A line chart that is always going up and getting better, even if a little by little. This was never the truth, and still is not. Rather, Philip Melanchthon reminds us in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession: “We are justified by faith alone, not because of love or other virtues that follow, but because faith alone takes hold of the promise, by which we are accounted righteous for Christ’s sake.” [2]
Faith doesn’t make you better; it makes you his.
There is no ladder. No inner light. No mystical moral improvement plan that gradually makes you less of a sinner and more of a saint. There is only Jesus who was crucified for sinners like you, risen for your justification (Rom. 4:25). Faith doesn’t make you better; it makes you his.
Don’t Look at Yourself—Look at Christ
The real tragedy is when Christians begin looking inward for their sainthood, asking: “Am I holy enough? Have I repented sincerely enough? Do I really believe?” Don’t look at your holiness, look at Christ. Don’t turn your faith into an exercise of your will. Remember that faith trusts only in the one who has declared you to be his. Again, Melanchthon is helpful here: “Faith is not just a knowledge of history, but a confidence in God’s mercy, promised in Christ.” [3]
That promise is external. Concrete. Outside of you, but at the very same time, it’s for you. And it’s finished. It doesn’t depend on your sincerity, your feelings, or your progress—only on Christ crucified and raised. That’s why we say faith doesn’t justify because it’s strong, but because of the object it clings to: Christ Jesus, who justifies the ungodly.
The Saint Lives by Faith
So, what is a saint? Not a spiritual superhero. Not a perfected moral example. A saint is one who has been declared righteous by the Word, clings to Christ alone, and who now lives by faith in Christ Jesus alone, who loved him and gave himself for him (Gal. 2:20).
A saint is justified. And that’s the only thing that matters. Because when everything else is stripped away—your virtue, your effort, your reputation—justification is the one thing that cannot be taken from you. “It is certain that man must despair of his own ability before he is prepared to receive the grace of Christ.” [5] And when he does, he receives everything because he receives Christ. Justification isn’t one doctrine among many: it’s the center, the beating heart, the announcement that turns sinners into saints and death into life.
[1] Martin Luther’s Lectures on Galatians (1535)
[2] Lowell C. Green, How Melanchthon Helped Luther Discover the Gospel (Irvine, CA: 1517 Publishing, 2016), 49.
[3] AC, Apology IV, 53.
[4] AC, Apology IV, 48.
[5] Martin Luther, The Heidelberg Disputation (1518), Thesis 18
