The word Christian is familiar enough that we can use it without stopping to consider what we mean. It may describe someone’s family background, the country where he grew up, or the beliefs he claims. In the New Testament, however, the name identifies people with Jesus Christ. Its three appearances take us from a growing church in Antioch to Paul’s hearing before a king and then to Peter’s instructions about suffering.
These passages explain why Christians could accept a name outsiders sometimes treated with contempt, and why simply claiming the name cannot make a person belong to Christ.
First Called Christians in Antioch
Acts 11 describes believers scattered by the persecution that followed Stephen’s martyrdom. They carried the message about Jesus beyond Jerusalem:
Now those who were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to no one but the Jews only.
But some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, preaching the Lord Jesus.
And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.
Some spoke only to Jews. Men from Cyprus and Cyrene also preached the Lord Jesus to Greek-speaking people in Antioch, and many believed and turned to Him. Antioch became a major center of church life and mission among Gentiles. Those who believed now shared an allegiance to Jesus that reached beyond their places of birth.
When the church in Jerusalem heard what was happening, it sent Barnabas. He recognized God’s grace at work, rejoiced, and urged the believers to remain faithful to the Lord. He then went to Tarsus to find Saul and brought him to Antioch. The two men spent a year with the church teaching many people. Luke records the name in that setting:
And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people. And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.
The disciples “were first called Christians.” Luke does not identify the person who first used the name or describe the tone in which it was spoken. I think it was likely applied by others who recognized the disciples’ association with Christ, but Acts does not establish that the first use was an insult. A name later used contemptuously need not have been invented in contempt.
What Luke does establish is who received the name. These were disciples who had believed the message about Jesus, turned to Him, and gathered to receive teaching. Their shared identity centered on the Lord they followed. They were not merely people who happened to live near one another or admire some of the same moral principles.
The church in Antioch also reminds us that becoming a Christian brings a person into fellowship with other believers. Barnabas and Saul taught an assembled church; they were not offering a private identity with no connection to Christ’s people. The studies on the body of Christ and the ecclesia, or assembly, examine that shared life more fully.
What the Name Christian Means
The Greek word is Christianos, formed from Christos, the title Christ. Christ means the Anointed One and corresponds to Messiah. The ending associates a person with Christ, so the name identifies His followers or people. It does not literally mean little Christs, although some use that expression devotionally to encourage imitation of Jesus.
The New Testament uses several other names for the same people. Disciples learn from and follow Jesus, while believers trust Him. Brethren are members of God’s family, and saints are people set apart in Christ. Each name describes something true about those who belong to Him. We do not need to discard the name Christian in order to use the others.
Paul gives a particularly direct explanation of belonging to Christ:
But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.
And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
Everyone who belongs to Christ has His Spirit. Church attendance, a Christian upbringing, and familiarity with the Bible can bring someone into contact with the gospel, but they do not themselves give him new life. A person can feel at home among Christians while remaining an unbeliever. Admiring Jesus and agreeing with some of His moral teaching are different from receiving Him in repentance and faith.
When I speak of regeneration, I mean the new birth God gives, not merely a person’s decision to adopt a religious description. The Holy Spirit dwells in those who have been born again, and their conduct should begin to show that new life. Obedience is evidence of salvation rather than its purchase price, and growth does not mean sinless perfection. The study on the new birth explains this more fully.
Persuaded to Believe and Unashamed to Suffer
The word appears again in Acts 26, when Paul speaks before King Agrippa. Paul recounts his earlier persecution of believers and the risen Christ’s appearance and commission to him. He explains that he called people to repent, turn to God, and do works fitting repentance. His testimony leads to the Messiah’s suffering and resurrection, and he directly asks Agrippa whether he believes the prophets. Agrippa answers:
Then Agrippa said to Paul, “You almost persuade me to become a Christian.”
The exchange shows that Paul’s message called for a personal response. Agrippa recognized that Paul was addressing him about becoming a Christian. Paul did not retreat from that aim. In the next verse, he says that he wants Agrippa and everyone listening to become as he is, except for his chains. The prisoner wants the people hearing him to share what he has in Christ.
Readers differ over how to understand Agrippa’s reply. Some hear a confession that Paul has nearly persuaded him; others hear a pointed question about being persuaded so quickly. The Greek wording allows a reference to a short time, and Luke does not record Agrippa becoming a believer. We should not turn the verse into certainty about how close the king was to conversion.
I find Paul’s appeal to his hearers striking because his circumstances gave him no reason to advertise Christianity as a route to social advancement. He was in chains, yet he wanted his hearers to receive the salvation he had received. Becoming a Christian meant trusting the crucified and risen Lord, turning from darkness to light, and living under His authority. It involved much more than finding Paul’s defense interesting.
Peter’s first letter contains the third and final New Testament occurrence. He writes to believers who face reproach and suffering, and tells them how to understand being identified with Christ:
If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.
The same passage distinguishes suffering for Christ from suffering for murder, theft, wrongdoing, or meddling in other people’s affairs. Peter gives no encouragement to behave badly and then claim the consequences as persecution. A believer must consider why he is being opposed. When the suffering comes because he bears Christ’s name, Peter gives this instruction:
Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter.
He is not to be ashamed of belonging to Jesus. Other people may treat the name as disgraceful, but their judgment cannot determine its worth. Peter connects being a Christian with bearing “the name of Christ.” The person suffering is identified with the Savior who redeemed him, and he can honor God even while others dishonor him.
I need to keep this instruction beside Peter’s calls for honorable conduct, gentleness, and reverence. If I speak abusively or act dishonestly and someone objects, the objection is not automatically an attack on Christ. But if I am pressured to deny Him or abandon what He commands, I cannot gain approval on those terms without betraying Him. Peter calls us to remain faithful without becoming quarrelsome or ashamed.
What Early History Can and Cannot Tell Us
Writers outside the New Testament show how the name continued to be used. Their testimony helps establish public recognition and historical usage; it does not replace Scripture as the authority for doctrine.
In Annals 15.44, Tacitus describes Nero’s treatment of Christians after the fire of Rome. He connects their name with Christus and refers to His execution under Pontius Pilate. Tacitus writes with hostility toward their religion, even while describing the cruelty inflicted on them. He wrote in the early second century about events under Nero in the first century. We should read him as a later historian without assuming he witnessed the events.
His account shows how a later Roman writer understood the group and its connection to Christ. It also preserves evidence of the name’s association with persecution in Rome. We can use that evidence without accepting the contempt with which he describes their faith or pretending that his account explains who first coined the word in Antioch.
Pliny the Younger supplies a different kind of evidence in his letter to Emperor Trajan, Letters 10.96. Writing as a Roman governor in the early second century, he asks how to handle people accused of being Christians. He is unsure whether the name itself is punishable or whether punishment requires crimes associated with it. He also describes questioning the accused and demanding acts of worship to the Roman gods and the emperor’s image, together with a repudiation of Christ.
Public identification with Christ could bring a person before an official who demanded that he renounce Him. Pliny reports ordering people executed because they continued to identify themselves as Christians. The letter also records descriptions of Christians meeting to sing to Christ as divine and pledging not to commit theft, adultery, or deceit. His account is not a Christian statement of faith, but it shows that the name involved actual worship and allegiance. Refusing to renounce Christ could cost a believer his life.
Christian writers also embraced the name. In his letter to the Magnesians, chapter 4, Ignatius of Antioch urges his readers to be Christians in reality, rather than only bear the title. He makes that appeal while discussing the church’s shared life and its leaders. Believers had accepted the name positively, and Ignatius used it to urge them to live consistently with what they called themselves.
The historical witnesses show outsiders using the name with hostility and believers accepting it as an identification with their Lord. That makes an origin in mockery possible, yet Acts does not tell us the first speaker’s intent.
More Than a Cultural Label
Today, the word can be applied loosely to a family, a nation, a political preference, or a moral tradition. None of those associations establishes that a person belongs to Christ. Paul explains why those Christ has redeemed are to live for Him:
For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died;
and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.
We become Christians through salvation by faith in Jesus, not by improving ourselves until we deserve the title. He is the eternal Son of God who became fully man without ceasing to be God and lived without sin. Wicked men crucified Him, but He willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. He shed His innocent blood and died to redeem sinners, completing His atoning sacrifice at His death, before His burial and bodily resurrection. Those who repent and believe receive forgiveness and new life through Him. The study on the gospel explains that salvation.
Christ saves us, and obedience follows as the fruit of His work in us. We cannot make ourselves His people through self-discipline. Yet belonging to Him changes the direction of our lives, because the One who saves us also calls us to follow Him. Jesus explains the cost of that allegiance:
Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
The cross was an instrument of execution. Jesus was calling for an allegiance that could cost a person his life. He was not offering a religious title we could adopt while continuing to treat ourselves as the final authority. Believers still have much to learn, and we can stumble and need correction. But the Lord who saved us has the right to direct our conduct, including the choices that may cost us comfort or approval.
The misuse of the name has done real harm. People have claimed it while denying Christ’s deity or bodily resurrection, excusing cruelty, or concealing abuse of power. We must be prepared to call such conduct wrong. Family history or a respectable reputation cannot turn false teaching into truth, and the word Christian cannot make abusive behavior righteous.
Because human claims can be misleading, Paul’s instruction to Timothy directs us to the Lord’s knowledge and His command:
Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: “The Lord knows those who are His,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”
The Lord knows His people even when others are deceived by appearances. Those who publicly name Christ are also commanded to depart from iniquity, or wrongdoing. I cannot use His knowledge of me as an excuse to protect a sin I already know is wrong. Confession, repentance, and a willingness to receive correction belong in the Christian life.
At the same time, our standing before God rests on grace. A struggling believer is not kept by proving himself worthy of the name through his own strength. The Holy Spirit dwells in him, Christ intercedes for him, and the Father disciplines him as His child. Those promises encourage us to seek the Lord when we fail. They give neither a reason to despair over every struggle nor permission to make peace with sin.
Jesus calls His disciples to do good in a way that directs other people to the Father:
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
In the same sermon, He warns against religious acts performed to attract admiration. Our conduct should let others see the good God produces and give them reason to praise the Father. If I use generosity, prayer, or service to make myself seem impressive, I am seeking praise for myself through acts that should honor Him.
Bearing Christ’s name reaches into ordinary responsibilities. It calls for honesty when misleading a customer would make a sale easier, patience when a family member needs help at an inconvenient time, and mercy toward a person who cannot repay us. It governs how we use money, speak about other people, and conduct ourselves sexually. When we do wrong, we should be willing to admit it and repent rather than protect our image at another person’s expense.
Those actions do not purchase salvation. They make visible the new life and allegiance Christ has given us. We cannot control every use outsiders make of the name, but we can refuse to deny the Lord when His name brings reproach. Remaining faithful to Him includes confessing the truth, loving His people, and receiving His correction.
My Final Thoughts
The name Christian first appears in connection with disciples who had turned to the Lord and were being taught His Word. Agrippa used it when Paul called for a response to the gospel, and Peter told believers how to bear it under suffering. Its meaning is inseparable from the Christ to whom it points.
I want my use of the name to express more than a background or a claim. Christ redeemed His people through His blood, gives them His Spirit, and calls them to follow Him. We can rest in the assurance that the Lord knows those who are His while taking seriously His command to depart from sin. If others attach shame to His name, we should remain faithful and glorify God.