As surprising as it may be to some, the name Christian was first coined by non-believers in Antioch during the first century. According to Acts 11:26, “The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.”1 This was a label given to the community of disciples.
Far from a compliment, the label of Christians was a form of ridicule, which may seem strange to us. For those of us who grew up in the United States, Christianity was embedded in much of our culture. What seemed strange, if not offensive, was to hear atheist voices like Madalyn Murray O’Hair and Christopher Hitchens, who were quite vocal about disdain for Christianity. But in the first century, these so-called Christians were a small group of people whose difference was that they aligned themselves with Jesus Christ, a Jewish man crucified on a Roman cross. Therein lies the strangeness of being Christians.
Crucifixion was viewed as shameful and weak (cf. 1 Cor 1:23-25). It was the Roman way of humiliating their enemies,2 especially those whom others believed to be the Christ (Messiah). Crucifixion was a mockery that said, as N.T. Wright so eloquently puts it, “If you want to be high and mighty, then we’ll give you high and mighty when we nail you to the cross.”3
It seems strange to think that people aligned themselves with someone crucified, but these Christians did. According to Acts, they had a message that they shared with anyone who would listen, “telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus.” Of course, we know they did so because they believed that God raised Jesus from the dead. The result was that many more people became believers and joined their ranks as Christians.
Something significant was happening. Although these folks who believed in Jesus were few in comparison to the larger Roman Empire, a movement was taking shape. The Christians in Jerusalem sent Barnabas to Antioch. The text tells us, “When he [Barnabas] arrived and saw what the grace of God had done…” (Acts 11:23). This is the big clue as to what it means to be a Christian.
When Barnabas came to Antioch, he was able to see with his eyes. Seeing has to do with the act of physically observing or perceiving with the eye.4 Nobody had to tell Barnabas what was happening because he was able to see it for himself. The life of these Christians was more than just ascribing to particular doctrines, attending a Sunday church service, and leaving an offering before leaving. Their Christian Faith was a way of living as much as it was a belief. It was an allegiance to Jesus as Lord, rather than Caesar, that resulted in a radical life rooted in the grace of God.
The lives of these Christians embodied the gospel—the good news of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God. It was the living of their faith in Jesus Christ that made them appear strange,5 earning these disciples in Antioch the label “Christians.”
But that was then, and this is now. Here we are, more than halfway through 2025. The challenge for us is that we’re not living in a time where Christianity is new. We’re living in a society where people are aware of Christianity, and a significant portion of those people are seeing the lives of Christians and saying, “If that’s Christianity, then we’ll take a pass.” It’s part of the reason we now live in sort of a post-Christian society. Anyhow, eighteen years ago, a book by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons was released, titled Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity… and Why It Matters. What their research revealed was that Christians are perceived as hypocrites, disingenuous in our motives, homophobic, too sheltered and out of touch with reality, too political, and lastly, judgmental.6
Like it or not, these are the circumstances we live in, and they are not likely to change for the better anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean we throw the towel in, so to speak, and give up. What we can do and must do is recommit ourselves to living as a strange people, strange as in following the way of the crucified Jesus Christ. I mean, strange as in giving our sole allegiance to Jesus Christ in the way that we live to warrant that label, Christians. I mean, strange but in a godly way, so that people might see us as Christians with an envy that draws them to us and makes them curious about the Christian Faith.
The believers we read about in Acts came to be known as Christians not by their own choice but because they were committed to living in the name of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We’re called to be no less, no more: Living in the name of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and as long as that is how we live, we’ll always be the Christians Jesus wants us to be.
All scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
N.T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2016), 55, “Those who crucified people did so because it was the sharpest and nastiest way of asserting their own absolute power and guaranteeing their victim’s absolute degradation.”
Ibid, 59. Wright makes this point as he writes, “…the Romans sometimes used crucifixion as a way of mocking a victim with social or political pretensions. ‘You want to be high and lifted up?’ they said in effect. ‘All right, we’ll give you ‘high and lifted up.’’ Crucifixion thus meant not only killing by slow torture, not only shaming, not only issuing a warning, but also parodying the ambitions of the uppity rebels.”
See the entry for ὁράω in Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3d ed., rev. Frederick William Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 719..
Willie James Jennings, Acts, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017), 124, writes that the name Christians was meant as “ridicule that registered the strangeness of their song and of their sound. But like a new song that announces a new time in present time, it may often seem and sound strange. Christian in its plural form always equals a strange new future.”
David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity… and Why It Matters (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007), 29-30. It’s worth noting that perception and reality are not the same. The research shared in this book reveals how Christians, in general, are perceived. This doesn’t mean that these perceptions are always accurate, but almost always there is some truth to perception.
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Author: K. Rex Butts
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