Does it matter to be a Christian?

Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people.

The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. Acts 11:25-26

A recent report tells us that for the first time ever the number of people in Britain who identify themselves as “Christians” has dropped below 50%. They (we?) are still far and away the largest religious grouping, but I suppose this is a landmark that it’s difficult not to notice. Is it time to panic? time to throw up our hands in despair and lament that our country has “ceased to be a Christian country”?

Of course not. (Indeed, is there ever a time when panic and despair are called for? No!)

Those of us who regard ourselves as Christians in the sense of believing in certain truths concerning the historic person of Jesus Christ, and who genuinely try, however weakly, to place him as heart and centre of our lives – we have known for decades that we are in a very small minority. So these latest figures really come as no surprise to us.

Nor, of course, do they tell anything like the whole story. What, after all, does “identifying as a Christian” in fact mean?

This label, which is so familiar in our modern world, occurs just three times in the whole New Testament: once on the lips of a sceptical unbeliever (Acts 26:28); once as a term of confident self-identification by a Christian leader (1 Peter 4:16); and once, above, as an explanation of how the word was coined. But today, the word “Christian” has come to mean a thousand and one things to a thousand and one people; if you’ll pardon the illustration, it’s like a rich, nourishing tomato soup that has been diluted so often that you just can’t taste the tomato any more.

In the early days, to “identify as a Christian” could get you imprisoned or burned alive; but today many who are happy to regard themselves as agnostics or even atheists are also happy to call themselves “cultural Christians”.

And so we have got used to qualifying the word Christian with one or more others: we claim to be “true” Christians, or “practicing” Christians, or “born again” Christians, or “committed” Christians, or “church-going” Christians, or “Bible-believing” Christians. But I’m afraid that any of those can make us sound self-righteous and sanctimonious.

Is there any way out of this confusion?

A missionary society I follow seems, judging by what I have read of their recent publications, to have taken an extreme step to solve the problem: they have simply ditched the word Christian altogether. They call themselves “Jesus-followers”.

It seems rather odd: but I must admit that I have a lot of sympathy with them. There are times when a word has become, frankly, more trouble than it’s worth, and deserves to die – and perhaps that may even apply to a word we find in scripture which was the church’s first name.

Going back to Acts 11:19-26 the question arises: Who in fact were these people in Antioch who were nick-named “Christians”, “Christ’s people”? (Quite likely the name was intended mockingly, just as Methodists were originally mocked as fanatical Christians with their methodical ways.)

The story of the Antioch church is one of the most exciting in the New Testament, because it marked a moment when the first followers of Jesus embarked on a radical, history-changing new departure.

To understand it we need to grasp a vital fact: at the start Christianity was a thoroughly Jewish affair. Jesus was the Jewish Messiah or King, and all his first followers were Jews. In spite of the promises of the Old Testament - that the Messiah would come to be “a light to lighten the gentiles” as well as the Jews - not until the remarkable events in Antioch did this reality take shape.

Antioch, in Syria, was a major city, the third in the Roman empire after Rome and Alexandria, a bustling meeting-point and melting-pot, a centre for all sorts of religious viewpoints. The key verse is Acts 11:20…

Most of the church members in Jerusalem had fled after the killing of Stephen (Acts 8:2), and some ended up in Antioch. Luke tells us that these people “spread the word only among Jews” (notice that!). But Luke carries on: “Some of them, however,… began to speak to Greeks (gentiles) also… and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord”.

This, it seems, was totally unexpected. Wouldn’t we love it if Luke had told us how it happened and who “these men from Cyprus and Cyrene” were (truly unsung heroes)! But he doesn’t. All we know is that what we might call a “Jesus-revival” broke out in Antioch, and it gave birth to a church where Jews and Gentiles rubbed shoulders together (unheard of! outrageous!).

These were the first “Christians”: people of different races whose lives had been transformed by the message of the gospel.

And isn’t that just what we “Christians” are - or should be - today? What we are called is really neither here nor there. All that ultimately matters is that we are Jesus-followers!

Can we say an enthusiastic Yes to that question?

Lord, I don’t claim or pretend to be the “Christian” I should be. But I do seek to be a true, serious, obedient and joyful follower of Jesus. Please help me! Amen.