God honors His saints.
God loves His saints and honors them on earth and in heaven. And He commanded us to honor them and considered that an honor to Him Himself. For honoring them is a divine biblical teaching; whoever opposes it, opposes God…
God honors His saints.
And whoever honors the saints is in fact honoring God who loves them…
Perhaps one of the most beautiful images that expresses the Lord’s honoring of His saints is the image of the Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration with His saints…
Moses and Elijah appeared around Him in glory, to the extent that Peter asked that three tabernacles be made for the three… (Mark 9). And although the glory is for the Lord alone, He will raise His saints in glory, “to be conformed to His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21).
I was also amazed—in the Lord’s honoring of His saints—by an image that Saint John saw and described in the Book of Revelation, concerning the priests.
He saw “around the throne twenty-four thrones, and on the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white robes, and on their heads crowns of gold” (Revelation 4:4).
How can these sit on thrones before the throne of God, and on their heads crowns?! What glory is this that God grants to His children, and He does not consider it at all a diminishment of His glory?!
And the same situation, the same glory, God granted to His twelve apostles.
“When the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you also will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28). Truly this is wondrous: they sit on thrones around the throne of His glory, to judge the tribes…
And the Apostle Paul says even more than this: “Do you not know that we shall judge angels? How much more, things that pertain to this life!” (1 Corinthians 6:3). Is not judgment the Lord’s, He who is the righteous Judge?! Yet He allows His children also to judge. And this brings us to another point:
God gives from His titles and from His names to His saints…
He is the Judge, and He gives them also to judge. He is King and Priest, and He gives them also to become kings and priests. They reign with Him, inherit with Him, and sit with Him in His glory.
He is the Light of the world, and He says to them: “You are the light of the world.”
He is the true Vine, and He says of the Church that it is a vine…
He is the Shepherd and the Teacher. And He gave His disciples to be shepherds and teachers.
He errs who thinks that God withholds glory from His saints, or who thinks that honoring the saints diminishes the glory of God!!
How wondrous is the Lord’s saying to His disciples: “Truly, truly, I say to you: he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also, and greater works than these he will do” (John 14:12)… Before the phrase “greater than these,” the mind stands astonished before God’s love for His children and His honoring of His saints.
By saying: “He who honors you honors Me,” He made honoring the saints an honor to God Himself, and not a diminution of His dignity.
Are you zealous for God and for His glory?! This reminds me of the story of Joshua the son of Nun, who was zealous for the glory of his teacher Moses the prophet, and wanted to prevent those whom he found prophesying, so that Moses would remain the only prophet!! And here his holy teacher said to him: “Are you zealous for my sake? Oh that all the Lord’s people were prophets, if the Lord would put His Spirit upon them” (Numbers 11:29).
We honor the saints because God Himself honors them.
The Lord says: “If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor” (John 12:26). And the Father honors these not only in heaven, but also on earth—during their lives and after their departure as well.
Of the examples of this honor is the naming of the Law after Moses.
It is the Law of God, yet He calls it “the Law of Moses.” It is the Law of the Lord, yet He calls it the Law of Moses. And He says: “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed you to divorce your wives” (Matthew 19:8), while God is the one who allowed it, but through the mouth of Moses… And God finds no problem in attributing His commandments and words to Moses; rather, this is an overflow of His love.
And many of God’s holy books are attributed to His saints.
They carried their names, while they are God’s books alone… inspired by the Holy Spirit, who spoke in the prophets, and after that He allowed them to bear their names—even the Gospels.
It is the humility of God… and also the love of God for His saints.
And in the same manner, He allowed churches to be built in the names of His saints, and allowed miracles to be worked by the hands of His saints. And He allowed His children to be attached in heart to these saints; indeed, He called them to that. And He said: “He who honors you honors Me,” and “He who rejects you rejects Me” (Luke 10:16).
And God, more than this, called Himself by their names.
He said: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6; Matthew 22:32). He is the God of the saints, the God of our fathers whom we honor and thus honor Him. And the saints felt this, so they called upon the Lord by the names of His saints: “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, our fathers” (1 Chronicles 29:10–18), “O God of our fathers” (1 Kings 18:36–38; Wisdom 9:1–4).
And perhaps, as an introduction to honoring the fathers, He said: “Honor your father and your mother” (Deuteronomy 5:16).
If we honor our fathers according to the flesh, by a commandment—the first commandment among the human-relationship commandments of the Ten Commandments, and the first commandment with a promise—shall we not honor our spiritual fathers all the more? Shall we not honor our guides who led us in the faith, the apostles and the prophets? And their honor would be according to the divine commandment, according to the holy Word of God… those whom God Himself honors by saying: “I will honor those who honor Me” (1 Samuel 2:30).
And from His honoring them, He made people seek their prayers.
When Abimelech took the wife of our father Abraham, God said to him in a dream: “… restore the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you shall live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours” (Genesis 20:7).
He shows Abimelech the effectiveness of Abraham’s prayer for him, that he may live.
And the same thing the Lord says to the friends of Job the righteous: “… go to My servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering, and My servant Job shall pray for you; for I will accept him, lest I deal with you according to your folly” (Job 42:8).
The Lord requires Job’s prayer for them so that He may forgive them; and we notice that the phrase “for he is a prophet” concerning Abraham is a manifestation of this man’s honor. And the phrase “My servant Job,” along with “I will accept him,” both carry God’s honoring of this saint in the eyes of his companions.
God’s concern for the prayers of these saints means that He granted them before the people “the keys of heaven,” just as He said to the apostles.
Look at Elijah, how he says with authority: “As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years except at my word” (1 Kings 17:1). The phrase “except at my word” shows the extent of this prophet’s confidence in his place before God and the strength of his word.
Even the anger of the saints and their punishments upon others, God upheld.
Elijah says to the captain of fifty: “If I am a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men.” So fire came down from heaven and consumed him and his fifty (2 Kings 1:10).
And the miracle is repeated more than once, showing us the power of Elijah.
And Elisha the prophet rebukes his disciple Gehazi, who ran after Naaman the Syrian seeking gifts and denied it to his master, and he says to him: “The leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and your descendants forever” (2 Kings 5:27). And Gehazi went out from before him leprous, white as snow.
And the curse that Noah placed upon his grandson Canaan, the Lord Jesus upheld in His conversation with the Canaanite woman…
And in the Gospel, in the New Testament, we find the same awe concerning the saints: Peter the apostle, by a word from him, Ananias falls dead; then Sapphira his wife falls dead like him, also by a word.
And Paul the apostle, by his command, Elymas the sorcerer becomes blind.
It is the awe of the saints, and the honor God granted to their word…
And just as their punishments were effective, so also were they a blessing…
Elijah was a blessing in the widow’s house. He said to her in the time of famine: “The bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth” (1 Kings 17:14). And so it was. And with the same blessing Elijah raised the widow’s son from death.
And Joseph the righteous was a blessing in Potiphar’s house. And likewise Jacob was a blessing in Laban’s house. And God says to Abram: “I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you” (Genesis 12:2–3).
And from God’s honoring of His saints is that He would take their opinion.
Before God punished Sodom, He presented the matter to Abraham, saying: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing, since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?” (Genesis 18:17–18). And God reasoned with Abraham and granted his request, and in His saying: “I will not destroy for the sake of ten,” there is honor to Abraham and to the ten if they were found.
And the same thing happened between God and Moses when God wanted to destroy the whole people. And how wondrous is the Scripture’s statement after the Lord’s conversation with Moses: “So the Lord relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people” (Exodus 32:7–14), and the Lord accepted Moses’ intercession.
And among the examples of God’s honoring His saints is His saying: “For the sake of… My servant.”
“For the sake of Abraham My servant” (Genesis 26:24), “For the sake of David My servant” (1 Kings 11:13). And the psalmist says: “For Your servant David’s sake, do not turn away the face of Your anointed” (Psalm 132:10).
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