and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. And for an entire year they met with the church and taught considerable numbers; and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch (Acts 11:26).
According to Acts 11, the name “Christian” originally was not a compliment, but a way for the opponents of the followers of Christ to ridicule those who followed Jesus’ path. Over the course of the centuries, the word has undergone an interesting transformation. In the centuries following the events of Acts 11, believers took the name as a badge of honor, but in 2012 the name has come to refer more to a cultural identification. The old joke is that if someone’s great grandmother ever crossed the threshold of the doors of a church building that the whole family is Christian.
“Christian” literally means “little christs,” and the implication is that a follower is so strongly identified with Jesus that the two are inseparable. In other words, not only does the believer adhere to Jesus’ ethic of love, but also His moral ethics.
Spanish has a phrase: “He is a ‘cristino,’ not a ‘cristiano’” to refer to someone who calls himself a Christian, but does not live like a Christian. There are already enough people who follow this philosophy! If we truly love Christ we must love as He loved, but also we must walk as He walked. As unpopular as the concept is in the twenty-first century, this means that there are absolutes that we must subscribe - - the absolutes that are taught in the Bible.
Here are some things that one who truly wishes to follow Christ must do:
1. Make sure that we truly are believers
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
2. Understand that Scripture is perfect and unchangeable
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16)
3. Submit ourselves to Christ’s teachings concerning love as well as His moral ethics
but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him. (1 John 2:5)
May we be cristianos instead of cristinos!
