What Is A Saint of God?

Lyall Johston—August 16, 2025

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A saint of God is one whom God calls a saint.

• one who has been converted of mind
• one who has been baptized and received the Holy Spirit

If that is you then you are a saint by the authority of God's Word. No man, no being in heaven above or on earth beneath can claim that they have the authority to make a man or a woman a saint.

That is an absolute lie! It does not agree with the Scripture! There's one Scripture which identifies these individuals just for who they are and what they are. We can find that in:

Isaiah 8:16: "Bind up the testimony, seal the Law among My disciples."

Very authoritative statement from the very mouth of God through Jesus Christ Himself! But when we look at v 20, and anyone claiming to have the authority which they do not have from the Scriptures, from God, then let's hear what Isaiah was given to write:

Verse 20: "To the Law and to the Testimony!...." In other words that's a statement which includes the entirety of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. This is God's seal. This is what the apostles, and the prophets of the Old Testament, sealed up. The prophets completed and sealed the entirety of the Bible and that occurred finally at the end of the first century by John the last apostle to live.

Verse 20: "To the Law and to the Testimony!.... [in other words according to the Word of God] …IF they do not speak according to this Word…"

That's the Bible that we have in front of us, the Scriptures! The entirety the Old and the New Testament!

"…it is because there is no Light in them" (v 20).

So what does that make them? Well it makes them liars! All right subject today:

• What is the focus of God's saints?
• What are we?
• What are the saints of God to be focused on as His saints?

We're all very familiar with the statement the very first commandment is that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your mind and with all your being! In fact, with everything that is within you, and that is the commitment we made to God!

Well that's certainly a major focus. It's more general and here's another general one which needs to have the details added so we can fully understand that. That's what we're looking at today

• seek first the Kingdom of God

The intensity there is to seek and to keep on seeking the Kingdom of God, but it doesn't end there, does it?

• and His righteousness

There's our focus!

Let's have a look at another focus and this is in a very frequently quoted Scripture in the New Testament:

Philip. 2:5—here's an excellent focus because this focus is also bound up to those two statements that we mentioned: the love of God and seeking His Kingdom and His Righteousness.

Let's have a look here and see how Jesus Christ did this, because He is our example, our primary example:

• that's why He came and took on the flesh
• that's why He became a man

to show us all the ways that He and the Father had established right from the very beginning of the life of all human beings!

Philippians 2:5: "Let…"

• What does the word let mean?
• Does it not mean to allow?
• Does it not mean to be totally desirable, wanting to let whatever it is that Paul's going to go on to say?

This is something we should want and desire but it's also something Paul is exhorting us to:

Verse 5: "Let this mind be in you…"

Now we all have minds that we've had from birth. That's not the mind that God wants to see completed in each one of us and this is what he really wants this is what God is seeking in you this is what God is seeking in me.

Verse 5: "Let this mind… [think about that] …be in you… [What is that mind? He goes on to say]: …which was also in Christ Jesus."

• What was the mind that was in Christ Jesus?
• Was it not the mind of His Father?
• Did not Jesus do all things that were pleasing in God's sight?
• Did He not love God with all His heart, mind and soul?
• Did He not seek to return to the Kingdom that He came from?
• Did He not seek God's righteousness?
• Did he not, as a young man before He began His ministry, seek God in everything so that
• everything He said
• everything that He spoke

came directly from the Father, and that was:

• His authority
• His confidence
• His strength, faith and endurance

right to the very end when He suffered that terrible painful excruciating death on the cross!

Verse 6[transcriber's correction]: "Who, although He existed in the form of God…"

That's what Paul is writing about, Jesus formerly, before He became that man or the man Jesus Christ; He did not:

"…consider robbery to be equal to God" (v 6).

Yes, He knew He had been God He was God with all power all might and all glory!

• What did He do?
• What did Jesus do that was so important?
• What is it that He did that is so important to you and to me?

Verse 7: "But emptied Himself…" Isn't that interesting?

Verse  5: "Let this mind be in you…"

So the mind that we have from birth has to be changed. It has to be converted to the mind that was in Jesus Christ.

• it has to be a mind that is seeking God's Kingdom
• it is a mind that's seeking God's righteousness
• it's a mind that's working on loving God with everything that is in each one of us

Verse 7: "But emptied Himself, and was made in the likeness of men…"

• What does that tell us what we should be doing? Does this give us a focus?

Indeed, it does! This is a major focus for all of those called by God converted have His Spirit.

• this is our focus
• this is our life's work

"…and took the form of a servant" (v 7).

There is the Logos, the Word, the One Who was God, the One Who was with God and the One Who became flesh and He was God. God in the flesh:

• without all His glory
• without all His power
• reduced to a human being from that small seed from His Father

was born as a man in the flesh

• without the glory
• without the power

He knew how much he needed in His physical life to listen to His Father to pray to His Father every day so His Father could teach Him how to live each day of His life.

"…He humbled Himself, and became obedient… [to His Father in heaven above] …unto death, even the death of the cross" (v 8).

Is that a focus for you and me when Paul tells us back in:

Verse 5: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."

Verse 9: "Therefore, God has also highly exalted Him and bestowed upon Him a name, which is above every name."

IF we are to let the mind of Christ dwell within us, is this telling us something about our goal and what God plans to do for you and for me? IF we let this mind dwell in us, which means:

• progressively letting that mind dwell within us
• progressively growing in the grace and knowledge of God the Father
• putting on the mind of Christ

which was

• totally obedient to God the Father
• loved God the Father
• sought to be back with His Father (John 17)

Verse 9: "Therefore, God has also highly exalted Him…"

That is exactly why Jesus Christ is our example. This is exactly why we are to let and we are to want and to desire to have that mind of Christ within us.

We are to let it, we are to block everything that presents itself before us and takes us away on a side road through a different gate, not the narrow gate that God has prescribed for us. It's a day-by-day task, minute-by-minute, 24 hours a day because Satan is there day-by-day, hour-by-hour, pushing away at us.

Now we resist him when we realize what's happening and he'll depart from us, but he is going to return! He is going to come back and test and try us again. But IF we are letting the mind of Christ dwell within us, and asking God to help us to discern every wicked spirit that tries:

• to get at us
• to us
• within us

THEN we can block him every time.

Now, IF we were to go astray, well you can read in Heb. 12, God so loves us that He has in His Plan something that is so important. Maybe we don't like to read some of these Scriptures, but do read Heb. 12 to see that when we go off track, that God so loves us that He is going to severely correct us and discipline us!

Now do we want to reject that discipline or do we want to go with it and see:

Oh Lord, my God, you are correcting me. I did not understand. I did not appreciate that what I was doing was not pleasing to You. Oh, Father, please forgive me and direct my steps, direct my paths in the way of Your Laws and Your Commandments. Do not let me go astray.

The Psalms, of course, with King David as such a great example for us to read these to know how to handle these situations.

Verse 10: "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow…"

You and I have already made that decision or if we haven't, we do need to be bowing our knees. In other words, humbling our minds, humbling our spirits before God and becoming like Christ, humbling ourselves and becoming obedient like servants, God's servants!

But more than that, to our brothers and sisters. And as Paul ends his letter to the Hebrews about the love that we need to have for one another, which is one of the main themes of course of Jesus Christ and God the Father Themselves.

Verse 10: "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of beings in heaven…"

This means all the angelic realm: all those angels around the very Throne of God even, even God's personal angelic beings! Even they willingly bow their knees; in other words, they throw their crowns, almost like giving their crowns and their authority to Jesus Christ, which that picture is so beautiful. That's what we had to do with our minds. This is how we can let our minds be like the mind that is still in Jesus Christ in so much greater power, even now that He is God again in his person, the man Jesus Christ now in heaven above. We as men and women, will also have also been promised to be in that heavenly realm in the Kingdom of God, as kings and priests, ruling over the nations of the world.

Is it not worth being humble of mind? And one way that we can humble ourselves is through prayer and fasting. Now once we get the bite in our stomach when we're fasting, that hunger begins to bite at us, we realize we depend on the food we eat to survive.

But the other lesson in fasting and humbling ourselves before the presence of God is to realize how much we need the presence of God in our lives through reading of His Word, which He wants to inscribe, not just to give it, but to inscribe it indelibly so it will never leave us!

Thus, what are we doing? We're ensuring our place in that first resurrection.

Verse 9: "Therefore, God has also highly exalted Him and bestowed upon Him a name, which is above every name; That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow…" (vs 9-10).

Our knees must bow to Jesus Christ, recognizing Him now as our Lord, our King, and as our God, which gives us that intimate personal relationship to God the Father before His Throne.

What a magnificent teaching this is from the Word of God!

Verse 11: "And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. So then, my beloved, even as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (vs 11-12). We do that:

• by prayer
• by study
• by fasting
• by actually not just reading the Word of God, but:
• by obeying it
• by doing it
• by hungering and thirsting after that Word

because in that word is:

• eternal life
• eternal righteousness

right now letting Christ's mind dwell in us!

What are we doing? We're focusing. Like the saints that we can read of in Heb. 11. They didn't want to have any part of this world. They were strangers and sojourners. You and I are strangers and sojourners in this world.

• What are we looking for?
• What are we seeking? We're seeking a house.

We're seeking a Kingdom that has not been built by the hands of man, but has been built by the hands of God the Father and Jesus Christ for you and for me to dwell in with Them. To bring:

• peace
• happiness
• righteousness
• perfection to every last human being on the face of this earth that is willing to bow their knee to Jesus Christ

But they have to do more than that. And that's where we come in and teaching them not just to bow their knees, but to obey and follow every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. This is important because:

• here is our help
• here is our confidence
• here is our faith

in the Word of God, just like all those mentioned in Heb. 11.

Verse 13: "For it is God Who works in you both to will…" IF we turn to God:

• He will give us the will
• He will give us the desire

To let the mind of Christ, as it says in v 5, be in you, and let His words, as Paul wrote to the Colossians, dwell in you! I think the word is richly or deeply! What does that mean? It means a study of the Word of God!

Verse 13: "For it is God Who works in you both to will…"

Yes, He gives us the will, but not only that, He gives us the to do. What is the to do?

• He gives us the power
• He gives us the ability

to let the mind of Christ be in us and to dwell in us and to permeate every corner, every crack of our mind!

So our mind becomes absorbed, the mind of Christ! Isn't that what Paul said? Let this mind be in you! Or would we rather hang on to the mind and the attitudes that we have? We just don't want to let them go. 'No, I can't let this go' Oh, yes, you can. Yes, I can! We have to, we must, and we will IF we let Christ's mind be in us by seeking it through:

• prayer
• study
• fasting

Again, fasting, once that begins to bite at your stomach and you realize you need food, so do our minds begin to bite when we are lacking the food of God's Spirit:

• which comes through our prayer to God
• which comes through our reading of His Word

and is given an extra push, it's given an extra oomph, you know, when we fast and show God, 'Yes, God, I really, sincerely want that mind of Christ dwelling within me.'

Verse 13: "For it is God Who works in you both to will and to do according to His good pleasure. Do all things without complaints and disputes so that you may be blameless and without offense, innocent children of God in the midst of a crooked and perverted generation… [and is becoming more that way day-by-day] …among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding forth the Word of Life… [the Scriptures, Genesis-Revelation. that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, nor labored in vain" (vs 14-16).

That's what all elders desire to do. that is to ensure that the sheep have been given responsibility to feed will finally be there in the Kingdom of God, a mighty glorious future we all have ahead of us!

Scriptural References:

• Isaiah 8:16, 20
• Philippians 2:5-7, 5-8, 5, 9-16

Scriptures referenced, not quoted:

• John 17
• Hebrews 12; 11

LJ:bo/po
Transcribed: 8/22/25

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