ithout meaning
that, as early as in the apostolic times, the "Saints" was a kind of
_nomen proprium_ of believers, comp. Acts ix. 13, 32. We are even now
the sons of God, and hence even already installed into an important
portion of the inheritance of holiness; but it has not yet appeared
what we shall be, 1 John iii. 2. But the beginning, and the
continuation pervading all ages, viz., God's dealings throughout the
whole of history, whereby he ever anew lifts up His Church from the
dust of lowliness, afford to us the guarantee for the completion,
which is, with graphic vividness, described in the last two chapters
of Revelation.--"_To be called_" is more than merely "to be;" it
indicates that the _being_ is so marked as to procure for itself
acknowledgment.--The words: "_Every one that is written to life in
Jerusalem_" anew point out that judgment will go before, and by the
side of grace. The meaning of [Hebrew: HiiM] is, according to the
fundamental passage in Ps. lxix. 29, "not living ones" (_Hoffmann_,
_Weiss._ i. S. 208), but "life." In Revelation, too, the book of life,
and not the book of the living ones, is spoken of "To be written to
life" is equivalent to being ordained to life, Acts xiii. 48; comp. my
Comment. on Ps. lxix. 29; Rev. iii. 5. Life is not naked life,--a
miserable life is, according to the view of Scripture, not to be called
a life, but is a form of death only--but life in the full enjoyment of
the favour of God; comp. my Comment. on Ps. xvi. 11, xxx. 6, xxxvi. 10;
xlii. 9; lxiii. 4. The Chaldean thus paraphrases it: "All they that are
written to eternal life shall see the consolation of Jerusalem, _i.e._
the Messiah." Comp. Dan. xii. 1; Rev. iii. 5, xiii. 8, xx. 15, xxii.
19; Phil. iv. 3; Luke x. 20. The bodily death of believers cannot
exclude them from a participation in being written to [Pg 21] life;
for, being a mere transition to life, it can, in truth, not be called a
death. Here, too, the word of Christ applies: "The maid is not dead but
sleepeth," Matt. ix. 24. The fact that there is no contradiction
between bodily death and life, _i.e._ a participation in the blessings
of the Kingdom of Christ, is pointed out by Isaiah himself in chap.
xxvi. 19: "Thy dead men shall _live_, my dead bodies shall arise, for a
dew of light is thy dew."

Ver. 4. The Prophet points out that before the Church is raised to the
dignity of the saints of God, a thorough change of its moral
conditions, an energetic