The high school from which I graduated is a boarding high school. Recently they built a new girl’s dorm and decided to name it. Why do we name things? Because names define things, they define the characteristics of things, they have meaning.
Acts 11:26 tells us that “in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians” (ESV). Why were they called Christians? It was because they were like Christ. How were they like Christ? Was it just because they had the same beliefs as Christ? Acts does not tell us but I would expect it was also because their actions were like Christ’s. Jesus had certain characteristics (beliefs and actions) and the people of Antioch saw that the disciples had the same characteristics.
If the word “Christian” was not yet coined, would our friends and neighbors coin that word to describe us?
