Bible Dictionary

SAINTS

Christian Life • Both

Saints are people set apart as belonging to God. In the New Testament the term applies to the company of believers, whose holy conduct should grow from God’s gracious consecration rather than from claims of personal merit.

Definition

Saints are those whom God has set apart as belonging to Himself. The term expresses consecration and divine ownership rather than personal moral achievement. In the New Testament it ordinarily refers to the company of believers, not merely to exceptional individuals. Because God’s claim comes first, saintship is not a graded accomplishment or an optional status. Nevertheless, those consecrated to God are required to live in a manner worthy of that relationship.

Biblical Usage

In the Old and New Testaments, the terms rendered “saints” commonly designate God’s people. In some Old Testament passages they refer to angels or holy ones. The New Testament applies the designation broadly to believers. Their conduct should be holy and godly, with actions becoming those who belong to God.

Historical Background

The biblical terms translated “saints” include Hebrew and Aramaic forms of qadhosh, chacidh, and the Greek hagioi. The first and third chiefly express consecration and divine claim, while chacidh more generally conveys righteousness or goodness.

Historical Bible Dictionaries

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)

sants: In the King James Version 3 words are thus rendered:(1) qadhosh (in Da the same root occurs several times in its Aramaic form, qaddish);(2) chacidh, and(3) hagioi.Of these words (2) has in general the meaning of righteousness or goodness, while (1) and (3) have the meaning of consecration and divine claim and ownership. They are not primarily words of character, like chacidh, but express a relation to God as being set apart for His own. Wherever qadhosh refers to angels, the rendering "holy one" or "holy ones" has been substituted in the Revised Version (British and American) for the King James Version "saint" or "saints," which is the case also in Ps 106:16 margin (compare 34:9), and in 1Sa 2:9, as the translation of chacidh.While hagioi occurs more frequently in the New Testament than does qadhosh in the Old Testament, yet both are applied with practical uniformity to the company of God's people rather than to any individual. Perhaps the rendering "saints" cannot be improved, but it is necessary for the ordinary reader constantly to guard against the idea that New Testament saintship was in any way a result of personal character, and consequently that it implied approval of moral attainment already made. Such a rendering as "consecrate ones," for example, would bring out more clearly the relation to God which is involved, but, besides the fact that it is not a happy translation, it might lead to other errors, for it is not easy to remember that consecration--the setting apart of the individual as one of the company whom God has in a peculiar way as His own--springs not from man, but from God Himself, and that consequently it is in no way something optional, and admits of no degrees of progress, but, on the contrary, is from the beginning absolute duty. It should also be noted that while, as has been said, to be a saint is not directly and primarily to be good but to be set apart by God as His own, yet the godly and holy character ought inevitably and immediately to result. When God consecrates and claims moral beings for Himself and His service, He demands that they should go on to be fit for and worthy of the relation in which He has placed them, and so we read of certain actions as performed "worthily of the saints" (Ro 16:2) and as such "as becometh saints" (Eph 5:3). The thought of the holy character of the "saints," which is now so common as almost completely to obscure the real thought of the New Testament writers, already lay in their thinking very close to their conception of saintship as consecration by God to be His own.David Foster Estes

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