They Were Called Christians First

Twelve, she counted, in one week, and she started counting on the Tuesday out of irritation and finished on the Sunday out of something closer to grief.

Difficult. That was one, and it was said pleasantly, in a meeting, by somebody who meant it as a compliment about standards.

Then: a safe pair of hands. Then: not really a people person, which was said behind her and got back to her the way those things do. Then a nickname that has followed her since a Christmas party. Then somebody described her, in an email she was copied into by accident, as the one who pushes back.

There are others. She has them written down, which is either healthy or is not.

She is not fragile. She has been in that building eleven years and she runs a department that works, and she is aware that a woman who runs a department that works collects words.

But she noticed something on the Sunday, and it has stayed with her.

Every one of those twelve came from somebody else's mouth. Not one of them was chosen by her. And when she went looking, honestly, for a word she had said about herself out loud, in her own voice, in the last year, she could not find one.

A city gave them a name because of what it saw

And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch (Acts 11:26).

That is one of the most under-read sentences in Acts.

It is not a naming ceremony. Nobody voted. A group of people were doing something in a city, and the city, watching them, coined a word for them, and the word was built out of the name of the one they kept talking about.

Which tells you two things.

The name was earned in the plainest sense: it came out of what people observed. And the name was about somebody else. Christian is not a description of a personality or a competence or a way of behaving in meetings. It is a possessive: Christ's ones. Of the Christ party. Belonging to Him.

You have a name whose whole content is who you belong to. That is what the word in Antioch was made of, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a belonging-name land in a woman who has been described by other people all week, because Scripture says He is the Spirit of adoption and adoption is a word about whose you are.

Twelve words from other mouths

Now let me say the thing about the twelve, because I think you already know it and have not put it in a sentence.

Every word that lands on you at work is somebody's summary of your usefulness to them. That is not malice. It is what a workplace does: it needs to describe people quickly in relation to tasks, and so it produces words like safe pair of hands and pushes back, and those words are not lies, they are just partial in a way nobody notices.

The damage is not any single one of them. The damage is the ratio. Twelve from outside, none from inside, over and over, until the only vocabulary a woman has for herself is other people's shorthand.

You are not the sum of other people's shorthand for you. The word says man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and it is the Holy Spirit who supplies a person with a true word about themselves, because He is called the Spirit of truth and not the Spirit of the appraisal.

The one that outranks

Here is why this particular name outranks the twelve, and it is not because it is nicer.

Every one of the twelve is a description of you. This one is a description of whose you are. Those are different categories, and a description of ownership always outranks a description of qualities, because qualities are assessed and ownership is settled.

Difficult can be argued about. Safe pair of hands can be revised at the next restructure. Christ's one cannot be adjusted by anybody in that building, because none of them were consulted when it was given.

You are Christ's, and it is not a matter anybody at work has a view on. Scripture says you are Christ's, and Christ is God's (1 Corinthians 3:23), which is a chain of belonging and not a performance review, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a settled thing in a woman rather than another item on a list.

And I will keep it honest, because you would see through anything else. Saying this does not change what is said about you next week and does not make the email you were copied into any less irritating. What is settled is that there is a word about you that came from a different direction entirely, and a woman who says it out loud first has changed the ratio.