I know, that's a little play on words in the title but I couldn't resist. No one has asked yet, but I need to explain why I think I can put a "saint" in front of my name. It's important that no one thinks I have canonized myself as an equal to the great Saints of the Catholic church or one to be venerated in any way. It provokes curiosity especially in those that are familiar with the Catholic treatment of the title whether they are Catholic or not and seems to be out of line to take that sense of the title for yourself.
It truly is a matter of faith to carry that word in front of your name around with you. And since "faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God" we can naturally see what the Bible says a saint is. Looking to scripture, we see that the word translated saint is the Greek ἅγιος hag'-ee-os. It's root curiously is from ἅγος hagos which means "an awful thing". It has several meanings, sacred (physically pure, morally blameless or religious, ceremonially consecrated): - (most) holy (one, thing) [Strongs]. It carries a sense according to the dictionaries and simply put, a cleaned up person.
Now we're getting somewhere we can all as born-again Christians relate to. It's a short neat little word that says "an awful sinner cleaned up by God's Grace." One tiny word that contains the entirety of the Gospel message in it, amazing. So, in the general sense, we are all saints if we are Christians. And yet we are called to be saints as well. So the title is bigger than we are and yet given to us by God in scripture. Rather than list the numerous passages here, I invite you to do a word search in the New Testament and read them for yourselves.
A good article with a Catholic point of view I would recommend is here.
Bible references you can look up: (Rom 1:7,1 Cor 1:2,Acts 9:13,Acts 9:32, Acts 9:41, Acts 26:10, Rom 8:27, Rom 12:13, Rom 15:25, Rom 15:26, Rom 16:15, 1 Cor 16:15, 2 Cor 1:1, 2 Cor 9:12, 2 Cor 13:13, Eph 1:1, Eph 4:12, Phil 1:1, Phil 4:2, Col 1:2, Rev 22:21)
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