Emphasis Preaching Journal
Death's destruction
Commentary
In most churches, All Saints' Day is the annual occasion for remembering the dead. We know, of course, that "saints" in the biblical sense can refer to living, breathing Christians, even to ones who do not always behave in ways we would call "saintly." Paul calls most of the Christians to whom he writes "saints," implying that he links that status more to justification than to observable behavioral transformation. This thinking lies behind the alliterative translation of Luther's simul justus et peccator as "simultaneously saints and sinners."
