Christian?

I was chatting with someone recently when I had the opportunity to say that I had become a Christian during my time in the Navy. Of course, the comment was in the context of a whole discussion and was a sort of “in passing” kind of comment. But it occurred to me that the person I was talking to might not have had a clue what I was talking about and simply didn’t want to make a fuss about it for whatever reason.

I’ve noticed, over the years, and more so recently, that folks come to me for counseling and one of the main things they are concerned about is whether they are Christian at all. So, I thought I would take a few minutes to talk about what a Christian is.

When I was pastoring a church in the south a lady said to me that everyone in the town was Christian, “After all,” she said, “no one has killed anyone.” And of course, everyone was nice. But is that the measure of what a Christian is? Not killing anyone?

When we look at the bible, we see the word Christian used three times. Two of the times assumes we know what a Christian is; “Then Agrippa said to Paul, “You almost persuade me to become a Christian” (Acts 26:28), and “Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter” (1 Peter 4:16), but the third actually tells us what a Christian is – sort of, “And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch” (Acts 11:26).

I said sort of because while we know that the first time the word Christian was used it was in reference to the disciples, thus a Christian is a disciple, we don’t know what a disciple is. At this point, it might be helpful to access a normal English dictionary. The word disciple means, “a follower or student of a teacher, leader, or philosopher.” Historically, all or most of the ancient philosophers had disciples, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and on and on. In the Bible, John the Baptist had disciples. Before his switch to being a disciple of Jesus, Paul was a disciple of Gamaliel (Acts 22:3). Otherwise, in the Bible, the emphasis is on being a disciple of Jesus. It was these disciples who were first called Christian in Antioch.

So, a disciple of Jesus is one who follows him, or who is one of his students.

This explains why, back in the 70s, Christians were called Jesus Freaks. They talked about Jesus all the time and this is what happens when you follow someone. You talk about them all the time.

Next time: How one becomes a follower of Jesus.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash