As I have written elsewhere on this blog, the name of the first part of the LDS church as The Church of Jesus Christ, is a title that fits very well with the current trend in many Christian circles to actually walk in the dust of Rabbi Jesus; to be what John Mark Comer calls a Jesus Apprentice. Well it turns out that the second half of the full name of the LDS church ending in Saints is also being picked up by many modern Christians and shown to be a good idea. That is, some Christians like Addison Bevere think it's a good idea to start going back to the term and identify Saints instead of only using the identifier Christians. To be clear, he's not saying we should abandon the term Christian, only that Saints is be a better descriptive label/term/name for the overall goal of Christianity and Christ's disciples.
Here are some excerpts from the book Saints: Becoming More than Christian by Addison D. Bevere:
FORWARD
The Bible refers to all believers as saints, yet we as a culture don’t identify with that term. In this book, Addison Bevere brings this archaic term into the modern space as he invites us to reclaim and own the identity of saints as followers of Jesus.
… Addison models the life of a saint by following the words and actions of Jesus, proving that devotion to Jesus is a transformative and glorious adventure. The message of Saints is not about achieving perfection ….
Location 388 - 438:
At first glance, you may have struggled with this book’s subtitle: Becoming More Than “Christians.” Please understand that I’m not campaigning against the term Christian. Truth be told, it’s not a bad identifier. But it has become too familiar, too cheap. ...
... I suggest looking elsewhere for a term that captures the mystery of our new life in Christ, our promised True Self. While the identifier Christian is used only three times in the New Testament, hagios —translated as “saints”—is used over sixty times. According to HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, hagios “refers to those whose relationship with God is maintained through faith in Jesus Christ.” [1] ... This invitation to be a Saint was a vital part of the early church’s language and identity. That’s why Paul would often begin his letters by addressing his audience as Saints.
To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints. (Rom. 1:7)
To those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 1:2)
To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae. (Col. 1:2)
Just by surveying these three verses, we can safely surmise that all of us are called to be Saints. ... These verses also show us death is not a prerequisite for sainthood. Not only can we become Saints in this lifetime, but we are also expected to embrace this identity and bring its corresponding reality into this world.
... The Tyndale Bible Dictionary adds that saints “are the people of the coming age.”[2] In other words, a saint is someone who brings a future reality into the present. ... Saints aren’t people who escape from the real world, living detached from the struggles of life. To become a Saint is to become profoundly human. It’s to plunge into God’s original design for humanity. It’s to feel what God feels for this world, empowering us to align our actions with his heart. It’s to embrace God’s nature and to step into the fullness of our new creation reality. ... When I reference heaven, please don’t think just of a celestial city. We, as Saints, can experience many of heaven’s realities—peace, joy, togetherness, forgiveness, love, mercy, wholeness, justice, and so on—in our lives today, revealing heaven to a world desperate for something more. ... God’s plan has always been to bring heaven to earth.
As we can see, just as Joseph Smith emphasized becoming Saints and building up the Kingdom of Heaven on earth through the ideal of Zion; many modern Christians like Bevere are realizing that the modern aftermath of the Protestant Reformation -- and its tendency toward what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called Cheap Grace -- is leading to a problem with the term and identifier "Christian." So many people who are Christian don't want to be called "Christian" anymore because of so many people who are fake Christians.
This is not to say that we should abandon the term and identifier Christian, but I find it interesting that Joseph Smith ended up with the name of his church as: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; which put an emphasis on becoming a Jesus Apprentice and building Zion as actual Saints (doers of the word).
A literal translation of the word Saints is holy ones, or called out ones. What is even more interesting is that the non-LDS Evangelical scholar Michael Heiser basically explains that in Heaven there is Yahweh/Jehovah and his angelic/messengers who are actually called holy ones (the word angels meaning messengers as just an adjective describing what some of these heavenly holy ones do). Heiser explains that the whole point of Christianity is theosis or deification, that is the saints undergoing a process of becoming divine beings like the heavenly divine beings (the heavenly holy ones) in Yahweh's Divine Council. So what Paul was actually teaching is that his earthly holy ones (saints) were actually partaking of the same divine nature as the heavenly holy ones (often translated "angels" which just means messengers). This sounds very close to what Joseph Smith was teaching with is concept of eternal progression and LDS deification. As the non-LDS biblical scholar James Tabor puts it it in his book Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity:
Paul is focused entirely on the other end of history, the termination of what he calls “this present evil age” (Galatians 1:14). What Jesus represents to Paul is one thing and one thing only—the cosmic, preexistent Christ being “born of a woman,” as a flesh-and-blood mortal human being now transformed to a life-giving Spirit. This is what drove Paul and excited him most. For him it explained the Genesis creation itself and accounted for all the subsequent “blood, sweat, and tears” of the human story. Humans were created to become Gods!
