Read the opening of any of Paul’s epistles and pay attention to whom they are addressed.
“To all those loved by God in Rome, called to be saints” (Romans 1:7, NET)
“to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, and called to be saints” (1 Corinthians 1:2, NET)
“to the saints [in Ephesus], the faithful in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 1:1, NET)
“to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi” (Philippians 1:1, NET)
“to the saints, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ, at Colossae” (Colossians 1:2, NET)
Paul addresses his letters to the saints. Not to a special class of advanced Christians within the congregations. Not to canonized heroes recognized by the broader church. To the saints — meaning all the believers in that city, in that congregation, in that ordinary church meeting in someone’s house. The widow attending services. The new convert from pagan idolatry. The longtime believer who served as a deacon. The slave girl who came on Sunday. The merchant. The household servants. All of them — collectively, by virtue of being in Christ — saints.
The Greek word is hagioi, the plural of hagios — holy. To be a saint in the New Testament is simply to be a hagios — a holy one — one who has been set apart for God through Christ. There is no second category of Christians who are “extra saints” as distinguished from regular church members. The hagioi are the church. The church is the hagioi. To be in Christ is to be a saint.
This entry explores hagios. The Spirit who has been given to the church is the same Spirit who makes the church holy — applies Christ’s righteousness to the believer, sets the believer apart for God, sanctifies the believer gradually through the means of grace. The Christian is hagios because God has made him so. The category is gift, not achievement.
The Word
ἅγιος (hagios), pronounced HAH-gee-os. An adjective, used with both substantive and predicate force. The family is large and theologically loaded. It includes hagiazō (ἁγιάζω, “to make holy, to sanctify, to consecrate”), hagiasmos (ἁγιασμός, “sanctification, the process of being made holy”), hagiosynē (ἁγιωσύνη, “holiness, the state of being holy”), hagiotēs (ἁγιότης, “holiness, holy character”), and the adverb hagiōs (ἁγίως, “in a holy manner”). The plural noun-use hagioi (ἅγιοι, “holy ones, saints”) is the standard New Testament term for believers in Christ.
The Latin equivalent of hagios was sanctus, from which the English word “saint” descends through Norman French. The semantic root in both languages is the same: set apart, consecrated, dedicated to God. The English word “sanctify,” the English word “saint,” and the English word “sanctimonious” all descend from the same Latin root that translates the same Greek root. The lexical reality is that “saint” in English is etymologically just “holy one” — the same word, two languages, no division of categories.
The lexical background is Hebrew. The Greek hagios in the Septuagint translates the Hebrew qadosh, the standard Old Testament word for holy. Qadosh names a fundamental theological reality: God is holy in His transcendence, His moral purity, His radical otherness from the creation; things and people belonging to God are holy by association with Him. The Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle and Temple was the most-set-apart place. The Sabbath was a holy day. The priestly garments were holy. Israel was a holy nation, called to be holy because God is holy (Lev 11:44, 19:2, 20:7). Holiness in the Old Testament theology has two dimensions running through it: separation (set apart from common use, dedicated to God) and moral conformity (corresponding to God’s own character). The two cannot finally be pulled apart, though specific contexts emphasize one or the other.
The New Testament’s hagios inherits this entire Hebrew theological structure and applies it to the new-covenant realities. The Holy Spirit (to pneuma to hagion) is the holy person of the Godhead. Christ is the Holy One of God (Mark 1:24, John 6:69, Acts 3:14). The church is the holy nation, a holy temple, a holy priesthood. And the individual believers are hagioi — saints — set apart for God in Christ, made holy by Christ’s righteousness imputed and the Spirit’s work begun.
Range of Meaning
In its New Testament usage, hagios covers:
- The holiness of God Himself. The transcendent, morally pure, radically other character of the One who is “holy, holy, holy” (Isa 6:3, Rev 4:8).
- The holiness of Christ — the Holy One of God.
- The Holy Spirit specifically — the pneuma hagion, the third person of the Trinity.
- The holiness of believers — hagioi, saints, those set apart for God in Christ.
- The holiness of the church — collectively, as a holy nation, holy temple, holy priesthood.
- The holiness of objects, places, and practices — the holy Scriptures, the holy kiss (1 Cor 16:20), the holy calling (2 Tim 1:9), the holy mountain (2 Pet 1:18).
The senses overlap because they all derive from the one fundamental reality: God is holy, and what He claims becomes holy by His claiming. The believer’s holiness is derivative — given by association with the God who is holy in Himself. This is the structural pattern that runs through the entire biblical theology of holiness, Old Testament and New together.
Where You’ll Meet It
“They called out to one another, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies! His majestic splendor fills the entire earth!’” (Isaiah 6:3, NET)
The foundational text. The seraphim sing the triple holiness of God. This is the theological floor on which everything else stands. God’s holiness is the source from which all derivative holiness flows. When Christians sing the Sanctus in the Communion liturgy — “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts” — they are joining a song that the seraphim began and the heavenly worship continues.
“but, like the Holy One who called you, become holy yourselves in all of your conduct, for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, because I am holy.’” (1 Peter 1:15–16, NET)
Peter quoting Leviticus. The Old Testament command applies to the New Testament church. Believers are called to be holy because the God who called them is holy. The basis of the command is God’s character; the requirement is conformity to that character; the structure is the same Hebrew theology of qadosh that runs through Leviticus 19. The new-covenant gift does not abolish the old-covenant call to holiness; it grounds it in Christ and applies it through the Spirit.
“For this is God’s will: that you become holy, that you keep away from sexual immorality,” (1 Thessalonians 4:3, NET)
Sanctification — hagiasmos, the noun built directly from hagios — is God’s will for the believer. Paul connects sanctification to specific moral content (the next verses spell out what sanctification looks like in sexual ethics). Holiness is not an abstract spiritual state; it is conformity to God’s character in concrete daily life. The Lutheran tradition has held that sanctification involves both the believer’s standing (set apart in Christ, alien righteousness) and the believer’s actual life (real growth in conformity to God’s will, the Spirit’s ongoing work).
“Some of you once lived this way. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:11, NET)
Paul’s compressed statement of what has been done to the believer. Three aorist passive verbs: washed (baptized — connecting to Baptizō), sanctified (hēgiasthēte, made holy), justified (declared righteous — Dikaioō). All passive. All accomplished. All in the name of Christ and by the Spirit. The “you were sanctified” here names the accomplished sanctification — the setting-apart that happened decisively at baptism. The believer remains hagios on the basis of this accomplished work, even while growing in actual conformity to God’s character through the Spirit’s continuing work.
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may proclaim the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9, NET)
The ecclesiological dimension. The church is a holy nation — ethnos hagion. The plural hagioi (saints) is gathered into one corporate holy people. The structure parallels Israel’s calling in Exodus 19:5–6 — Israel was to be God’s “treasured possession,” “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Peter applies the same language to the church, made up of Jews and Gentiles together, sanctified in Christ, called to proclaim God’s excellencies in the world.
“Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness, for without it no one will see the Lord.” (Hebrews 12:14, NET)
The eschatological dimension. The author of Hebrews names holiness — hagiasmon — as necessary for seeing the Lord. The holiness here is real. It is grown, pursued, struggled for. The believer is called to strive for it. This is one of the verses that Lutheran theology has held against antinomianism — the view that sanctification is optional because justification is complete. The Lutheran response: justification is complete in Christ, and sanctification follows from it as the Spirit’s real and necessary work in the justified believer. The faith that justifies is the faith that produces growth in holiness. Both are real. Neither cancels the other.
“For we are his creative work, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we can do them.” (Ephesians 2:10, NET)
The verse Paul places immediately after the famous For by grace you are saved through faith of Ephesians 2:8–9. Good works do not save; saved believers do good works. The structure is the same as the hagios structure: holiness does not earn standing; standing in Christ produces the holiness that the hagioi are called to live out. Paul refuses to let his readers separate justification from sanctification; he refuses equally to let them collapse one into the other. Both are real. Both are God’s work in the believer.
What Confessional Lutherans Hear
Confessional Lutherans hear hagios along two lines the broader Christian conversation has often softened or mishandled.
First, every Christian is a hagios. The New Testament use of “saint” applies to all believers, not to a special class of canonized heroes or particularly advanced disciples. To be in Christ is to be a saint. The category includes the longtime believer and the new convert, the visible servant and the obscure pew-sitter, the elderly faithful one and the recently baptized infant. All hagioi. All members of the same communion of saints explored in Koinonia.
This is the Lutheran pushback against the medieval Catholic development of canonized saints as a separate class of Christians. The reservation of “saint” for those formally recognized by ecclesiastical process — and the related development of practices of praying to canonized saints as intercessors before God — was a development beyond New Testament usage that the Reformation rejected. The Augsburg Confession Article XXI addresses this directly: the saints may be remembered for the encouragement of faith and for the example of their lives in particular callings, but they are not to be invoked as intercessors, because “Scripture does not teach us to invoke the saints or to seek help from them, because it sets before us the one Christ as mediator, atoning sacrifice, high priest, and intercessor.” 1 Timothy 2:5 is the foundation: “there is one God and one intermediary between God and humanity, Christ Jesus, himself human”
The Lutheran position on the saints does not despise the great Christians of history. Lutheran theology has kept the church calendar of feast days; Lutheran preaching has frequently held up the example of the apostles, the early martyrs, the medieval reformers, the heroes of the faith across centuries. The Augsburg Confession itself commends this practice. What the Lutheran tradition refuses is the invocation of saints as intercessors — and, more fundamentally, the reservation of the word “saint” for canonized figures only. The Pauline pattern is decisive. Paul addresses ordinary congregations of ordinary believers as “saints.” The Lutheran tradition takes Paul at his word.
The pastoral payoff: when you read Paul’s salutations, recognize that the words apply to you. The widow in the back pew, the schoolteacher in the choir, the farmer who comes once a month, the recently baptized child — all hagioi. The communion of saints is not a phrase about the dead heroes only; it is the gathered fellowship of all believers across time, including the one who reads this sentence today. You are a saint. The category is given.
Second, holiness is gift, not achievement — and is real but gradual. The Christian is hagios because God has made him so. The Christian is also called to grow in holiness through the Spirit’s ongoing work. Both are real. Neither contradicts the other. The Lutheran formulation distinguishes them with care: justification is the once-for-all declaration of righteousness (Dikaioō) — instantaneous, complete, on the basis of Christ’s righteousness imputed. Sanctification is the lifelong growth in real holiness — gradual, ongoing, the Spirit’s work in the believer through the means of grace.
The Christian remains simul iustus et peccator — simultaneously righteous and sinful — until the day of glorification. The righteousness is alien (Christ’s, imputed); the remaining sinfulness is real (the old Adam still present); the sanctification is gradual (real holiness growing in the believer through the Spirit’s work); the glorification is future (complete conformity to Christ at the resurrection). The Christian is called a saint by virtue of standing in Christ, and the same Christian is called to keep struggling against the remaining sin by the Spirit’s continuing application of Christ’s work.
This pushes back against perfectionism — the view, in various Holiness and Wesleyan traditions, that the believer can attain entire sanctification in this life. The Lutheran response: 1 John 1:8 says clearly, “If we say we do not bear the guilt of sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” The Christian’s sanctification is real but never complete on this side of glory. The believer who claims sinless perfection in this life has misread himself and likely misread Christianity.
This also pushes back against the opposite error — antinomianism, the view that since justification is complete, sanctification doesn’t matter. The Lutheran response is the verse from Hebrews already quoted: “pursue peace with everyone, and holiness, for without it no one will see the Lord.” Sanctification is real and necessary. The believer who lives in unrepentant sin should not presume the standing of justification continues to hold while the life shows no fruit of the Spirit’s work. The Lutheran tradition has held both ends carefully — against perfectionism on one side and antinomianism on the other. Faith that justifies is faith that produces growth. Growth that comes is the fruit of the Spirit. The believer who claims justification without showing growth needs to be called to repentance and to the means of grace by which the Spirit produces what He has begun.
The pastoral payoff: when you wonder whether you are holy enough, the answer involves both directions. In Christ, you are completely holy; the righteousness is His and is yours by gift; you are hagios. In yourself, you are still sinful, still growing, still being sanctified by the Spirit through the daily means of grace. Both are true. The growth is real. The standing is secure. The two work together; neither displaces the other. The Christian is called to live from the standing into the growth — knowing one is a saint, walking accordingly, returning daily to the means of grace by which the Spirit continues His sanctifying work.
Where People Get It Wrong
Three common ways.
The first is reserving “saint” for canonized heroes or for particular categories of advanced Christians. The medieval Catholic development that the Reformation rejected. Some modern Protestant communities have absorbed a similar pattern without realizing it — speaking of “the saints” as a special tier above ordinary believers, treating sainthood as a status to be earned by remarkable holiness. The Lutheran response: the Pauline salutations refuse this; all believers are saints; the category is gift, given to every baptized Christian who remains in the faith.
The second is perfectionism. The Wesleyan and Holiness traditions have developed the doctrine that the believer can be entirely sanctified in this life — sometimes called “Christian perfection” or “entire sanctification” — through a second work of grace subsequent to conversion. The Lutheran response: 1 John 1:8 will not bear this; the Christian’s sanctification is real but gradual; the simul iustus et peccator structure continues until glorification. The Christian who claims sinless perfection has misunderstood his own continuing struggle against sin, and likely the New Testament’s actual teaching on the believer’s condition.
The third is antinomianism — the inverse error. Some forms of grace-emphasis have so prized the freeness of justification that the call to sanctification has been muted or eliminated. The believer is told he is saved by grace and need not concern himself with growth in holiness, because Christ has accomplished everything. The Lutheran response: yes, Christ has accomplished everything for justification; yes, the believer is fully righteous in Christ’s righteousness imputed; and the same gospel that justifies produces, through the same Spirit who creates faith, real growth in holiness. The faith that does not produce growth is suspect (James 2:17). The holiness without which no one will see the Lord (Heb 12:14) is real, and the believer is called to pursue it through the means of grace by which the Spirit applies what Christ has won.
So What
You are a saint. The word in the New Testament applies to you, by virtue of your baptism into Christ. Not because you have achieved anything special, not because you are particularly holy in your own life, not because you have been canonized by a church or recognized by a denomination. You are a saint because Christ has made you one — set you apart, applied His righteousness to you, called you into His holy people. The category is gift.
For Sunday school teachers and Bible study leaders: when you teach a passage with “saint” or “holy” language, watch for the New Testament pattern. Paul addresses his letters to all the believers in each congregation as saints. Help your students see themselves in the address. They are the audience Paul wrote to. The saints in Corinth and Ephesus and Philippi and Colossae are the same kind of people as the saints in your congregation today — ordinary believers, set apart by Christ, growing in holiness through the Spirit’s work, members of the great communion of saints across two thousand years. The Lutheran tradition has held this against the medieval reservation of “saint” for canonized heroes, and it remains the better reading of the New Testament.
For yourself: when you wonder whether you are holy, remember whose holiness you possess. Not your own. Christ’s. The righteousness imputed to you in justification is what makes you holy. The Spirit’s ongoing work is what makes you grow in real holiness, slowly, week by week, through Word and Sacrament and the daily Christian life of faith. Both are true. You are a saint. You are still being sanctified. The standing is given. The growth is real. The triune God is at work — the Father claiming you as His own, the Son giving His righteousness for your justification, the Spirit applying it through the means of grace and producing real conformity to Christ in your actual life. The work is one. The work is comprehensive. The work is yours by gift.