This is another in a series of excerpts from The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed from High Street Press and available at Amazon. This except comes from the beginning of Section III: The Book of Life in the New Testament.

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This post begins excerpts from Section III of The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed. Our focus in this section is on references to the book of life in the Gospels and epistles.

The New Testament offers numerous references to the book of life, and it specifically identifies the book of life as belonging to the Lamb. As we read the Gospels and epistles, we come to understand more clearly that the book of life is the registry of the redeemed – a record of those who have trusted in the Lamb of God for salvation.

Here’s a summary of future posts:

Chapter 13 explores the encouraging words of Jesus to his followers that their names are “written in heaven” (Luke 10:17-20). In chapter 14, Paul writes about his coworkers, “whose names are in the book of life” (Phil. 4:3). Chapter 15 examines what the writer of Hebrews means by “the assembly of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven” (Heb. 12:23). 

Chapter 16 focuses on Jesus’s promise to the conquerors at Sardis that he will never erase their names from the book of life (Rev. 3:5). Chapters 17-18 revolve around the biblical application of the phrase “from the foundation of the world” in Revelation 13:8 and 17:8; they also look to eternity past and God’s work of redemption before the creation of all things.

Chapter 19 examines the “lake of fire” into which those whose names are absent from the book of life are cast (Rev. 20:11-15). Chapter 20 surveys Scripture passages that clearly speak of those banished from God’s presence, but without reference to the book of life, or to being “blotted out” or “erased.” The importance of works in final judgment – not to determine where we spend eternity, but how – is the focus of chapter 21, with a particular emphasis on the judgment seat of Christ.

Chapter 22 compares the “first resurrection” and “second death.” Chapter 23 offers an exegesis of Revelation 21:27 with respect to New Jerusalem: “Nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

Chapter 24 asks a very personal question: “Is your name written in the book of life?” For readers with any doubts, God offers a simple plan of salvation.

The final chapter, Closing Thoughts, offers a summary of biblical truths about the book of life.

Next: Your Names are Written in the Book of Life