What is a Christian?

An estimated 2.1 billion, or approximately 30% of the people in the World as of 2007 claim to be “Christian.” The majority of these individuals believe to be “Christian” on Biblical grounds. Interestingly, the word, “Christian” only appears three times in all of Scripture and it is never defined. All we know is that the Disciples were first called “Christians” at Antioch (Acts 11:26), King Agrippa felt that Paul was persuading him to become a “Christian” and that Peter encourages his readers to praise God for bearing the title.

It is hard to believe that 33% of the Worlds population would call themselves “Christian” without any clear-cut Biblical definition of what the term exactly means. What does this say about those individuals. Furthermore, many people worldwide are eager to hold “Christian” functions in hopes of spreading the message of “Christianity.” Moreover, most of these rallies are calling people to become “Christians” without offering a clear definition of clarification of the term in Scripture. The result is confusion and the production of sincere yet curious and confused people.

In reality, a clash over the meaning of the “Christian” and the means by which a person attains “Christian” status has triggered one of the most mind-boggling concepts; namely, what it means to be a Christian and how a person can become a Christian.
Recently, I have made it a point to call myself a “Brothers in Christ”(100+) or “Believer”(25+) simply because those terms are more common and less ambiguous. I still call myself a "Christian" because I know I am one.

Some Free-Grace theologians make a distinction between a "Christian" and a "Disciple", but the terms seem to be referring to the same people; namely, Disciples (Acts 11:26) who where suffering persecution for their beliefs (1 Peter 4:16). In fact, the title seemed to be downright derrogatory (Acts 26:28).

There is nothing wrong with calling oneself a "Christian." There is, however, something wrong with those of us who have been using the title without knowing where it came from or even if it was actually defined in the scriptures. Onward Christian soldiers!