A Good Word – ἅγιος (Saint)

To supplement our income when my husband was in seminary, we sometimes housesat for families who traveled. Occasionally, our responsibilities included taking care of their children. One of them grew up to become a star football player quarterbacking for a team with a biblical-sounding name: New Orleans Saints.

Most NFL teams have creature names like Panthers, Broncos, and Ravens. A few have human names, like the Buffalo Bills, the Houston Texans, and the Dallas Cowboys. But, as names go, the Saints stand in a class all by themselves. Saints are righteous people in glory.

So, why would New Orleans go with such an unusual name? Turns out, November 1, 1966, was the day the city was awarded an NFL franchise. And November 1 in the church calendar is All Saints Day. It’s a day on which some denominations commemorate all believers, living and departed, known and unknown, and our shared communion.  

As November 1 marked their teams’ beginning, New Orleans chose the name “Saints.” The moniker was rooted in the city’s love of jazz, particularly the song “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and the choice also gave a nod to the city’s faith heritage.

Often people think of a “saint” as an extraordinary person whose life has demonstrated heroic virtue. We hear statements like, “That man coaches fatherless kids—he’s such a saint.” Or “That nurse pulled an all-nighter at the bed of a sick kid. What a saint!” Sometimes we associate saints with valentines or wearing green. Sometimes people who have been canonized receive the title “saint”—though not in some Protestant traditions—as an acknowledgement of their holiness: St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Catherine of Siena. And the Greek word from which we get “saint” does mean “holy one.”

In the word’s biblical use, everyone in Christ is a saint. The term is typically translated from the Greek word ἅγιος (hagios), which means “holy one” or “one who is set apart.” In such usage, a saint is not necessarily a person of extraordinary holiness, but rather a believer in Jesus, declared righteous in Christ, and set apart by the Father to be a walking multi-media presentation of the Son’s character. Rather than labeling a special class of spiritual superhero, the New Testament writers used saint to describe all whom God has declared holy: everyone who believes in Christ. And God wants us to live into that identity.  

So I could say I’m St. Sandra. If you know Christ, fill in your own name.

That said, in the New Testament the word “saint” appears in the singular form only once: Paul exhorts the Philippian church to “Greet every saint in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:21). In each of the term’s other 229 uses, the New Testament writers use the word only in its plural form: “saints.”

Before Pentecost, we don’t see “saints” in Scripture at all. Instead, the word “disciple” appears frequently in the Gospels, used both of “the twelve” and of Jesus’s followers in general. But “disciple” disappears after the Book of Acts. The reference to Jesus’s followers broadens to “believers,” “siblings,” or “saints.” That’s probably because “disciple” appears in narratives focusing on a time when Jesus is physically present or referring to His followers with only one or two degrees of separation. But the language shifts in letters addressed to churches or groups of believers. In these the writer usually addresses an entire community, whose members are “brothers and sisters,” “believers,” and those who are “in Christ,” the “church of God,” or “saints.” The word “disciple” fits better when describing a living rabbi with followers who learned in person. But “saint” looks beyond the physical world.

If we believe in Christ as Lord, we will indeed join that number “when the saints go marching in.” But notice the plural. As saints we belong to a universal community, believers on earth and in heaven. We are members of a fellowship defined by the risen Christ and united by the Spirit. Do you know who you are?