In Part 1, I looked at the word ‘Christian’ and at what the first Christians called themselves (which was not ‘Christian’).  I summarized saying a Christian was someone who followed Jesus, spent time learning what Jesus taught, identified with others who were doing the same, believed they were set apart by or for God from the rest of the world, and were trustworthy and faithful in living what they believed.

I guess I still believe that. But there’s a problem with this definition. It’s still too vague. And there are many self-identified Christians who fit part but not all of it. Is that enough? Is that what Jesus wanted?

I just listened to a sermon by Andy Stanley in which he did – in a far superior way – what I’m attempting to do. His message “Christian” was amazing and I encourage everyone to listen to it. https://northpoint.org/messages/christian/brand-recognition

In this blog, I want to focus on what the first Christians called themselves. Like I said, it was not “Christian”. The name Christian was given to them by others and was derogatory. Kind of like it is now, only we give it to ourselves. And we’ve earned that reputation.

So what did the first followers of Jesus call themselves? And more importantly, what did Jesus call them?

I heard that the most common term was “disciple” but I wanted to see for myself. So I did a search using Bible Gateway. I subtracted the terms that were included in subtitles. The numbers vary between versions of the Bible. I’ve included a few popular versions for comparison.

	ESV	KJV	NASB	NIV
Christian	3	3	3	3
Disciple ( found only in the Gospels and in Acts)	247	255	255	279
believer	14	2	15	50
saint	65	62	61	0
Brethren*	0	229	0	0
Brother*	325	109	323	275

Results: “Brother” and “Disciple” were used a lot more often than any other terms. Since “Brother” included natural relationships as well as referring to Christ-followers, which would make the numbers much lower than “Disciple” if we subtracted them (anyone with more time than I have is welcome to do the math), I would say that the winner is…

Disciple

That’s what Jesus called us to be.

In my next blog, we look into what a disciple is, as found in the NT, and compare it to what Christian means to us today.