A) INTRODUCTION.

B) CHRISTIAN, THE MEANING OF.

C) FINALLY.

 

 

A) INTRODUCTION

 

 

The Disciples were known to each other as, and were among themselves called:  “brethren,” Acts 15:1; 15:23; First Corinthians 7:12; “disciples,” Acts 9:26; 11:29; “believers,” Acts 5:14; and “saints,” Romans 8:27; 15:25.

 

 

B) CHRISTIAN, THE MEANING OF.

 

 

The name “Christian,” which, in the only other cases where it appears in the New Testament, Acts 26:28; First Peter 4:16, is used contemptuously, and could not have been applied by the early Disciples to themselves.  By contrast, it was imposed upon them by the Gentile world.  The Jews, since they denied and still deny that Jesus is the Messiah, would never originate the name “Christians,” because of its implication to Christ.  Instead, the Jews ended up calling them “Nazarenes,” Acts 24:5.  The rarity of the name “Christian,” and its use in the New Testament, marks its early date when, as yet, it was a name hardly much recognized among the Disciples.

 

Thus, the name “Christian,” as given to an individual, was merely a slang, and simply meant, “an adherent of Christ,” or “one who follows the teachings of Christ.”  The “Christians” themselves eventually (or immediately, once persecuted for it) came to be proud of it.

 

In all three New Testament passages, the uncorrected “Codex Sinaiticus” reads, “Chrestian.”  We know from many sources that this variant was widely current in the 2nd Century.  Bible commentator Blass, in his edition on the “Book of Acts,” not only consistently renders the word “Chrestian,” but conjectures that “Chrestian” is the correct reading in the “Tacitus Manuscript” (“Annals,” xv.44), the earliest extra-Biblical testimony to the word.

 

The “Tacitus Manuscript” has since been published in facsimile.  This has shown, according to Harnack (“Mission and Expansion, English Translation,” I & 413 & 414), that “Chrestian” actually was the original reading, though the Name “Christ” is correctly given.  Harnack accordingly thinks that the Latin historian intended to correct the popular appellation of, “Circa,” 64 ad, in the light of his own more accurate knowledge.  He thus states, “The common people used to call them ‘Chrestians,’ but the real Name of their founder was Christ.”

 

This is exciting in that the confusion between “Christos,” and the more familiar Greek slave name “Chrestos,” is more intelligible at an early date than later, when Christianity was better known.  There must have been a strong tendency to conform the earlier witnesses to the later, familiar, and etymologically correct, usage.  It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that the original scribe of “Codex Sinaiticus” retains “Chrestian.”  On the whole, it seems probable that this designation, though bestowed in error, was the original one.

 

 

C) FINALLY

 

 

The KEY to what I have pointed out for us here, is that this carries with it the application that when one was called or designated as a “Chrestian,” he was considered to be “a slave to Christ,” just as much as one would be considered a “slave” to any master in those days.  Therefore, we could come up with the explanation for our word “Christian” today, as meaning, “a slave of [or for] Christ.”