The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 2Stokes, George Thomas
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 2
Stokes, George Thomas
Bible. Acts -- Commentaries; Bible. Acts -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Then, again, we have in the vision granted to Ananias and the
revelation made to him a description of Christ's disciples. The
description is a twofold one, coming on the one hand from Christ, and
on the other from Ananias, and yet they both agree. Ananias describes
the religion of Christ when he says, "Lord, I have heard from many of
this man, how much evil he did to Thy saints at Jerusalem"; and then
he proceeds to identify His "saints" with those that called on
Christ's name at Damascus. We have already noted prayer to Christ as a
distinguishing feature of His people[49]; but here we find, for the
first time in the New Testament, the term "saints" applied to the
ordinary followers of Christ, though in a short time it seems to have
become the usual designation for the adherents of the crucified
Redeemer, as we shall see by a reference to Rom. i. 7; 1 Cor. i. 2;
Eph. i. 1, and to numerous other passages scattered throughout the
Epistles. Our Lord Himself sanctions the use of this title, and
applies it Himself in a different shape in the fuller account of the
divine words given us by St. Paul in his speech before King Agrippa
(ch. xxvi. 18). Christ tells St. Paul of his destined work "to turn
the Gentiles from darkness to light, that they may receive an
inheritance among them which are _sanctified_ by faith that is in Me."
The followers of Christ were recognised as saints in the true sense of
the word saint--that is, as separated, dedicated, consecrated persons,
who had been made to drink into one Divine Spirit, had been made
partakers of a new life, had been admitted to a kingdom of light and a
fellowship of love, and who, by virtue of these blessings, had been
cut off from the power of Satan and the kingdom of darkness. And all
this had been and ever is to be effected "by faith that is in Christ."
Christ's saints or separated people are sanctified by faith in Christ.
Not that the bare exercise of a faculty or feeling called faith will
exercise a sanctifying influence upon human nature,--this would be
simply to make man his own sanctifier, and to usurp for his own poor
weak wretched self the work and power which belong to the Holy Ghost
alone,--but when Christ is realised as including all the parts of
God's final revelation, when no partial or limited view is taken of
Christ's work as if it were limited to the Incarnation alone, or the
Atonement alone, or the Resurrection alone, but when the diverse and
various parts and laws of His revelation are recognised as divinely
taught, and therefore as tremendously important for the soul's health.
When the Holy Ghost and His mission, and good works and their absolute
necessity, and Christ's sacraments and His other appointed means of
grace are duly honoured and reverently received, then indeed, and
then alone, faith is truly exercised in Christ, and men are not merely
separated by an external consecration, such as the Jews received at
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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