Restoring Apostolic Faith

One of the quiet but decisive shifts in early Christian identity is linguistic. The New Testament does notprimarily refer to believers as the faithful, the righteous, or the devout. Instead, it overwhelmingly calls them hagioi—“holy ones,” commonly translated “saints.”

That choice wasn’t accidental. It was theological, polemical, and worldview-shaping.

Hagioi, Not Hosioi: A Deliberate Break

In the Greek of the Septuagint (LXX) and in Second Temple Jewish literature, the typical term for faithful Israelites was hosioi—a word associated with piety, loyalty, and covenant faithfulness. It often translated the Hebrew ḥasidim (חסידים), meaning “the devout” or “the loyal ones.”

• Hosios / hosioi

Ethical orientation — pious behavior, covenant loyalty, moral devotion.

• Hagios / hagioi

Cultic orientation — consecration, sacred status, being set apart for divine use.

Hosios described how one lived.

Hagios described what one was.

That distinction matters.

When the New Testament authors consistently choose hagioi—over sixty times, especially in Paul’s letters and Revelation—they are redefining the Jesus-community’s identity at its core.

From Devout People to Consecrated People

By calling believers hagioi, the New Testament reframes holiness away from inherited covenant loyalty and toward active consecration through Christ and the Spirit.

This is not merely “good Jews who follow Jesus a little differently.”

It’s a new sacred status.

In the Hebrew Bible, hagioi language is used most frequently for:

• the temple

• the altar

• holy vessels

• sacred space

• priestly service

To apply that same term to people—collectively—signals a radical claim:

The people themselves are now the sacred space.

Paul makes this explicit:

• “You are God’s temple, and the Spirit of God dwells in you” (1 Cor 3:16)

• “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice” (Rom 12:1)

This is cultic language re-centered on human lives.

Holiness is no longer confined to geography, lineage, or ritual boundaries. It is embodied.

Why This Matters in a Second Temple Jewish World

Second Temple Judaism was already full of reform movements: Pharisees, Essenes, Qumran sectarians, revolutionary pietists. Many of these groups saw themselves as the faithful remnant—the true hosioi within Israel.

If the Jesus-movement had used hosioi as its primary self-designation, it would have sounded like:

“We’re another renewal group trying to get Torah right.”

But calling themselves hagioi does something very different.

It claims:

• consecration without the temple

• holiness apart from Levitical priesthood

• sacred identity grounded in Messiah and Spirit, not ancestry

That’s not reform. That’s reconstitution.

Living Temple Theology—Before It Had a Name

This is why temple imagery saturates the New Testament:

• believers as stones

• Christ as cornerstone

• the Spirit as indwelling presence

• communal holiness replacing sacred boundaries

The term hagioi quietly does the same work.

It says:

“We are no longer approaching holy ground.

We are the holy ground.”

That helps explain why Paul can address deeply flawed congregations—Corinth, for example—as hagioi. Not because their behavior is flawless, but because their status has already been redefined.

Holiness here is positional before it is behavioral.

Revelation: Holy Ones Under Pressure

The book of Revelation doubles down on this language.

There, the hagioi are not merely moral exemplars. They are those:

• marked off for the Lamb

• opposed by imperial power

• targeted precisely because they belong to a rival sacred order

Their holiness is not ornamental—it’s dangerous.

To be hagios in Revelation is to belong to a kingdom that stands in judgment over Rome’s claims to sacred authority.

A Word That Spoke Beyond Judaism

There’s one more layer.

In the broader Greco-Roman world, hagios was already recognized as temple language. It described what belonged to the gods—objects, people, spaces set aside as sacred.

That made hagioi legible beyond Jewish circles.

The early church wasn’t inventing a private dialect; it was:

• rooting itself in Israel’s holiness theology

• while using a term intelligible to Gentiles

• to announce a people set apart for divine use

In other words, hagioi translated holiness across cultures without diluting its meaning.

So Why “Saints” Still Matters

“Saint” has been domesticated in modern Christianity—either sentimentalized or institutionalized.

But in the New Testament, saint simply means consecrated person.

Not morally perfect.

Not spiritually elite.

Set apart. Claimed. Indwelt.

Calling believers hagioi was the earliest church’s way of saying:

“We don’t just believe sacred truths.

We are a sacred people.”

And that may be the most disruptive identity claim Christianity ever made.