They Called Them Christians

The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation was not an attempt to start a new religion but to bring necessary reformation to the existent Christian church. Nevertheless, the various reformed groups would come to be identified by different names such as Lutherans, Presbyterians, or Methodists. One of these reformed groups insisted that only those who professed faith in Jesus should be baptized. They were quite a peculiar group, known for baptizing people who had already been baptized as infants. Eventually, they came to be identified by this distinctive practice. They were called Baptists.

Like the Baptists, we find out in this passage that Christians got their name from their unique practices. Needing some way to identify this distinct group of people, they came to be called Christians by the world around them because of the faithfulness, loyalty, and devotion to Christ. They called them Christians because of the gospel they believed, the grace they displayed, and the guidance they followed.

The Gospel They Believed

First, Christians got their name and identify from the gospel they believed.

Israel’s Hope Realized

At this point in the story of the early church that we are told about in the book of Acts, the good news of Jesus has begun to spread to the non-Jewish world. We pick up the story here in Acts 11:19, which takes us back to what we were told in Acts 8. After the martyrdom of Stephen, “a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem” broke out, and the earliest believers in Jesus were scattered (Acts 8:1). Here we are told that they “traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch,” in other words, up the eastern Mediterranean coast, through modern day Lebanon and Syria and into Turkey. As they went, the spoke the word “to no one except Jews.”

This restrictive proclamation reminds us that “the word” they spoke, the Christian gospel, was not something different than the Jewish story. They spoke the word only to the Jews because it was their story; surely it would be the Jews who would want to hear the good news that everything they had been waiting for and hoping for had now come true. The Messiah of Israel had come. The kingdom of God had arrived.

Foolishness to Gentiles

Thus, this good news was being proclaimed to any Jewish person these refugees fleeing persecution in Jerusalem came across. It simply would not have naturally occurred to them that this message would have any relevance for non-Jews.[i]

But verse 20 says that there were some people “who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus.” What kind of response might one expect to get from a Gentile hearing this proclamation of Jesus?

To the Jews the message would be, “let me show you how Jesus has indeed fulfilled the story you believe in and hope for.” To the Gentiles the message would be, “Do you know who rules the world right now? A Jewish man who was crucified like a common slave, that’s who!” To which the Gentile world in the first century, we would expect, could only scoff and say, “Foolishness!” The Greek word is moria. “You are a bunch of morons for believing something like that.”

After all, it was quite clear to everyone who it was who ruled the world. It was not a Jew named Jesus who had not too long ago been crucified under Pontius Pilate. The ruler of the world at this point was Claudius, the emperor of Rome. To go around saying, “Jesus is Lord,” would sound like pure nonsense.

Why would anyone believe that? Maybe someone looking for a good conspiracy to propagate. And yet, verse 21 says that “a great number [of Gentiles] who believed turned to the Lord.” Notice: these Gentiles believed this message and so they turned to the Lord, the Lord Jesus, that is. They turned to him and away from Lord Claudius. After all, you can’t serve two competing masters.

Sticking to the Message

There can be no question that “preaching the Lord Jesus” to Gentiles would have been heard as posing a challenge to Caesar himself.

What these early Christians most assuredly did not do was retreat from this kind of gospel proclamation. They did not say, “Well, look, he’s not that kind of king. I mean, he will be one day when he returns, you’ll see.” They did not turn the gospel into what we today would call a religion, into something that has to do primarily with questions about one’s belief in non-physicial and non-political realities. No way! To do that would be to compromise the Jewish message and hope about the kingdom of God which would turn the world upside down. They stuck to the message, and shockingly, many non-Jewish people began to believe it!

And the reason why they did so was because in the proclamation of this good news “the hand of the Lord was with them” (v. 21). The Lord Jesus, alive and well. And here is how he exercises his sovereign power, a power greater than any king or president, greater than any emperor or dictator. He convicts and convinces people to believe the message—ridiculous as it may seem to so many—that the one who is in charge of the world isa Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and risen.

Supposing, then, that somehow, someway, a whole bunch of Gentiles began to believe that message. What would that mean? What would that look like?

The Grace They Displayed

Well, when word got back to the church in Jerusalem, they sent Barnabas to Antioch to find out. And what he saw when he got there was grace. These Christians were identified not only by the gospel they believed but also by the grace they displayed.

Barnabas Goes to Antioch

The sending of Barnabas to Antioch is a pattern we’ve seen before in Acts. In Acts 8, “when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John” (Acts 8:14). We saw it earlier in this chapter, when the apostles heard about the gentile Cornelius and his household receiving the word of God. They questioned Peter about this when he returned to Jerusalem.

As the good news of Jesus spreads, there is real interest in finding out what is going on. After all, this is not what might have been expected. Again, “folly to the Gentiles,” right?

So, could this really be happening? If so, it would be quite an exciting thing. Because from the Jewish perspective this would only add to the evidence that Jesus was in fact alive and well and ruling the world. The Jewish scriptures had always held out the promise that when the kingdom of God was established, the nations would recognize its rule and would even submit themselves to it. The good news of Jesus would not simply transform persons but transform whole societies of persons. It would even transform the world.

So off to Antioch Barnabas goes to see it for himself.

Barnabas Sees the Grace of God

Verse 23 says, “When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad.” That’s an interesting way of putting it, isn’t it? How can one see grace? It seems that “the grace of God” is the way Barnabas explained what it was he saw in Antioch. There was no better explanation.

So, let’s try to imagine the scene. We can imagine that Barnabas saw a significant number of Gentiles gathering together to worship Jesus, proclaiming with their mouths something like, “Jesus is Lord! He is Israel’s Messiah, and the world’s true king!” Astonishing! What is this? The grace of God.

Verse 23 says that Barnabas “exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose.” In other words, he saw a significant number of Gentiles as well as Jews who weren’t just professing faith in Jesus as the world’s true king but were actually living like it was true. So, he exhorted them to keep on doing what they were doing. “Remain faithful to the Lord.” The words with steadfast purpose are literally “with the heart’s resolve,” signifying that which one has devoted themselves. Did you get to watch any of the Winter Olympics? Weren’t you impressed by the faithful devotion of the world’s greatest athletes? That’s the kind of resolution Barnabas saw in this largely gentile church in Antioch. They were determined to live as though Jesus really was in charge of everything. What is that? That’s the grace of God.

Verse 26 speaks of these believers in Antioch as an ekklesia, an assembly, a gathering, a congregation. A church. What Barnabas saw when he got to Antioch was a church, a congregation consisting of many Jesus-worshiping Jews as well as many Gentiles. Amazing! What could explain this phenomenon of Jews and Gentiles sharing in worship, sharing in community, sharing even in food and drink? Nothing other than the grace of God.

Barnabas Strengthens the Church

Verse 24 tells us that Barnabas “was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.” But the verse begins with a conjunction, connecting this character reference to what is said in verse 23 about Barnabas exhorting this new and exciting church in Antioch. Barnabas’s exhortation to the congregation was inspired by the Holy Spirit, so no big surprise that his exhortation resulted in a great many more people being added to the Lord.[ii]The church in Antioch was growing, not by being the coolest new show in town with the hippest preacher and most accomplished musicians and singers. The only kind of growth possible for a church plant in Antioch would be true conversion growth. Even more evidence of the grace of God.

So now what? Once a church is planted and begins to see the grace of God at work in the congregation, the mission has only just begun. The believers in Jesus will need to dig their heels into this new reality, learn how to live together faithfully with the conviction that Jesus is Lord in a world that is enticing us to go in a thousand different directions.  This would be a challenge, as it remains for us today. But Barnabas knew someone who could help, and so he “went to Tarsus to look for Saul,” and then brought him back to Antioch. Roughly one decade has passed since Saul went to Tarsus, fleeing for his life in Jerusalem (Acts 9:30). No doubt during that time he had worked out much of his theology that we have come to know through the letters he would soon begin to write. “He joins in the teaching, preaching, and pastoral ministry of Antioch” for the next year.[iii]

Sometime during that year, these believers in Jesus, these disciples, began to be known in public by a name that had never been known before. There had to be some way of identifying this cross-section of the culture who believed and behaved so differently than everyone else. Their belief, their faith, was something they could articulate and explain, but it was not only that. It was what also defined how they lived every aspect of their life. “Faith” was not simply what they believed but also the personal commitment that accompanied that belief.[iv]And they got their name from what it was they were so deeply committed to, the one thing they all believed: Christ as the king of the world.

The result of this loyalty was something quite new, so it had to take on a new name. Here was a new kind of community that wiped out the traditional dividing walls of culture, gender, ethnicity, or any other social explanation. “Its focus of identity was Jesus; its manner of life was shaped by Jesus; its characteristic mark was believing allegiance to Jesus.”[v]The Jesus they called the Christos. So the public began to call them Christianoi. Christians.

We might do well to ask if that is what the name Christian means today, and if not, why not? Is there something else the public sees us who call ourselves Christians more devoted to in speech and action than the serious conviction that Jesus is the true sovereign of the world? Is that the message they hear us announcing? Is that the grace of God they see us living? Or would they likely call us something else?

The Guidance They Followed

There’s one more thing we can see in our text today about how the first Christians were identified, something that no doubt contributed to how they got their name. It was the guidance they followed.

A Prophetic Word

There’s a short story recorded for us here at the end of the chapter, beginning in verse 27. Let’s read it again:

Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius). So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul. (Acts 11:27-30)

This is the first time we’ve heard about the existence of Christian prophets, though we will see them again in Acts. These are puzzling characters to many of us Christians today. It’s an in-house debate about what these prophets are, whether they still exist, and, if so, how that should inform church life.

We cannot wade into that debate in this message. But we take it as certain that the prophecy Agabus delivered was from God. Luke says he prophesied “by the Spirit,” and he tells us that his prophecy—a predictive prophecy—passed the test of authenticity when the famine he predicted came to pass.

The important point here is what we are told in verse 29. Hearing a word from the Lord, “the disciples”—that is one of the main ways Christians identified themselves—responded.

Of course they did! What else would we expect from those who believed that Jesus was alive, that he was the world’s true sovereign and Lord? The were determined to live in that reality, so they were listening for what their living Lord was saying to them and then they responded obediently to that message.

In other words, the guidance they followed was the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the one who Jesus said he would give to his people to show them what they were to do (Acts 1:8). Is this the guidance we who call ourselves Christians follow?

Again, we cannot get into the intra-Christian debate about modern day prophecy. But Peter writes that “we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed” in the “prophecy of Scripture” and we must “do well to pay attention” to it (2 Pet 1:19-21). All Christians ought to agree that we must look to the prophetic word found in the Bible and learn together to listen to the guidance of the Holy Spirit that comes to us from its pages.

An Important Plan

Notice that the disciples at Antioch were only told about what was going to happen. But surely Luke would want us to see that the plan they determined to carry out in verse 29 was the appropriate, Spirit-directed response to the prophetic word that they heard.

After all, this plan was more important to their Christian identity than we might have noticed. They determined “to send relief to the [believers] living in Judea.” In one sense this would be instinctive: if you see someone as a member of your family, you do everything you can to help them. But that’s just the point here, isn’t it. This largely gentile church saw themselves as part of the same family with the mother church in Jerusalem. And now, like an adult child, caring for his mother in need, the support coming to Judea from Antioch would demonstrate both a healthy independence as well as an ongoing relationship with the Jewish believers in Judea.[vi]

Verse 30 simply says that this is the plan they carried out, sending support to the elders in Jerusalem “by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.” Acts tells us nothing else about that trip. At the end of the next chapter we are told about Barnabas and Saul returning to Antioch with their mission accomplished (Acts 12:25).

But Saul himself tells us more about the trip in Galatians 2, and we get the sense there it was quite an important trip. The question is whether the gift they brought would be received, not simply as a gift for someone in need, but as a token of solidarity. Would the Jerusalem church recognize that the believers in Antioch were in fact one family, that the good news of Jesus was advancing, that everything Israel had been waiting for was coming true?

This is what Saul had come to believe. But was he wrong? Had he believed it all in vain (Gal 2:2)?

How relieved he must have been to have been granted “the right hand of fellowship” to continue this mission to the Gentile world (Gal 2:9). How encouraged he must have been, too, by this evidence of unity, that the message he was proclaiming was the real message, and that it was having its real effect.

This was more evidence that the kingdom of God had come, and that to be called a Christian would become a marker of an identity that would be as honorable as one might imagine. _____

[i] F. F. Bruce, The Book of the Acts, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, ed. F. F. Bruce (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1988), 225.

[ii] Ben Witherington, III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 370.

[iii] N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Acts: Rediscovering What the Church Was and Is (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2024), 64.

[iv] N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography (New York: HarperOne, 2018), 90.

[v] Wright, Paul, 91.

[vi] C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, vol. 1, International Critical Commentary, ed. J. A. Emerton, C. E. B. Cranfield, and G. N. Stanton (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 559.