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“If you suffer as a Christian”

1 Peter 4:16
Cultural referenceSettledPeter
But if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but glorify God that you bear that name. (1 Peter 4:16 BSB)
* Greek: Christianos; first an outsiders' nickname for Christ-followers, worn here as a badge of honor.

What it sounds like today

'Christian' reads as the normal word; it wasn't yet.

The cultural key

Christianos appears only three times in the New Testament, and always on outsiders' lips: coined at Antioch (Acts 11:26) with the Latin partisan-suffix -ianus, 'Christ's lot,' the way Herodians meant Herod's men. It was a label from the police blotter more than the liturgy. Within decades, Pliny's letters to Trajan show trials where 'the name itself' (nomen ipsum) sufficed for punishment: being called a Christian was the charge. Peter writes as if he can see that docket coming: suffering 'as a Christian,' for the label alone.

Recovered meaning

Take the word they arrest you under and wear it as a doxology: 'glorify God in that name.' The outsiders' sneer became the church's name because texts like this taught believers to answer to it without shame.

Parallels: Acts 11:26; Acts 26:28
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