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The book of life

“The one who conquers ... I will never blot his name out of the book of life.” (Revelation 3:5)

In several places in the Bible, we read about a heavenly register in which God keeps track of who belongs to Him and who does not. We should not take this literally, as if the Lord needs a book to remember this. It is a metaphor indicating that God judges carefully and fairly; not arbitrarily and unpredictably.

A vision of John mentions even more books: “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. ... And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.” (Revelation 20:12) In this way, God justly judges each person's eternal destiny. Since no human is without sin, they all deserve to be condemned. How comforting, therefore, that it also says, “Then another book was opened, which is the book of life.” Somewhere else this book is described as “the book of life of the Lamb Who was slain.” The Lamb is Jesus. He was slain when He bore the punishment for our sins. Whoever believes in Him is recorded in His book. And whoever is in that book is not judged by his own deeds, but by Jesus' righteousness. They may live in the wonderful city of God on the new earth. What an amazing promise!