In a sermon a couple of weeks ago, our pastor talked about the origin of the word “Christian.” In the Bible the word shows up for the first time in the book of Acts where outsiders dubbed the early disciples of Christ as “Christians”. After some research on the word itself, we see that it comes from the Greek word Christianós, which was formed from the word Christós, meaning anointed or Christ, and the suffix –ianós, meaning a slave of the one whose name with which it was compounded. So quite literally Christianós meant “slave of Christ”. It seems as though the name was given to be a derogatory or negative label, but Paul considered it a great honor to be considered a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, possibly giving the word a more positive association for early disciples. The first time we see early believers being called Christianós is in Acts 11:26, “…and in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians” (ESV).
Outsiders would have given early Christians that name due to the fact that they saw the works and love of the early Christians and had no other way to describe what they saw other than Christianós, or Christian. They saw the way the disciples of Christ tried to live their life in the manner in which Christ himself instructed them to before he left this Earth. Contemporaries of the disciples would have seen Jesus and heard about his teachings, and in seeing the disciples live these teachings out naturally would draw the conclusion that they must be slaves if they are obeying Jesus as a master, even in his absence. I don’t think it’s too far fetched to think that Paul would have heard this name given to the disciples, this term they were using to describe this group of people in a negative light, and decided to redeem it by talking about it being an honor to be considered a servant of Christ repeatedly in his New Testament writings. He boldly proclaims he is trying to please God, not man, and goes on to say that he would not continue to be a servant of Christ if his end goal was not to please God (Galatians 1:10).
In the early Church, there was no mistaking someone for a Christianós who really wasn’t. They lived out the teachings daily. Today, on the other hand, it is easy to claim to be a Christian without actually living it out. We have given ourselves this label, and not been required to live up to it socially, and in turn our society has seen how we labeled ourselves and compared it to our actions and decided that they do not want any part of it. In large part this is due to a significant percentage of those who claim to be Christians not acting in a manner exemplifying the name. Instead of society seeing those actions and making the conclusion that they must be slaves of Christ and dubbing them Christianós, the label is self-imposed and the actions are assumed to line up with the label even if they do not. Our pastor sums it up this way: “the problem isn’t that Christians aren’t different, it’s that they aren’t different enough.” Christians have a bad habit of being different by name only, and sometimes by association with the local church body.
Brennan Manning said, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” Blaise Pascal said, “God made man in his own image, and man returned the compliment.” Many professed Christians twist the image of God into something that fits their agenda and makes them feel more comfortable about how they are living life rather than allowing God to mold their life into the agenda he had when he created them. We want God to be what we want him to be, and in turn create a limited God in our minds. It is hard to comprehend how God can be God and do the things that the Bible says God can do because men and women have confined him to look like what they think he looks like instead of deriving a concept of God based on the scriptures he has given us. These two statements work as a reminder to me that I do not want to be a contributor to atheism by crafting a god that I can imagine, but I want to contribute to the Kingdom of God and draw those around me to it.
In light of all of this, I almost want to un-label myself as a Christian. I am almost to the point where I do not want to call myself a Christian because of the world’s concept of what I would be saying that I am. I want to drop the preconceived notions of what Christian is societally and live out my life in a way that the world around me would give me the label. Not because of my decision to give myself a title, but because the society has given me that title in response to what is overflowing from my life. I want them to have no other way to label me but with the original Greek meaning of Christian, Christianós: a slave of Jesus, the Christ.
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