Acts 11:26

a whole year This long period, spent with success in the first field where the preaching to the Gentiles had begun, will account for the constant return to Antioch after each missionary journey of the Apostle of the Gentiles. He had preached at Damascus and at Jerusalem, but it was always with his life in his hand. At Antioch he first found a quiet Church with a wide scope for all his earnestness.

and the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch It is most probable that this name was given them by the heathen in ridicule. The disciples of Jesus never give it to themselves, and as the use of it would imply that those who bore it were the followers of the Messiah, the Christ, it is certain it would not be given to them by the Jews. The reason for a new distinctive term is apparent. When these new Gentile converts were joined to the Church of Antioch, none of the former distinctive appellations would embrace the whole body. They were no longer all Nazarenes or Galilæans or Greek-Jews, and as to the people of Antioch they probably seemed a strange medley, they would not be unlikely to apply to them such a hybrid form as "Christian," a Greek word with a Latin termination. The name is probably used in mockery by Agrippa (Acts 26:28), "With but little persuasion thou wouldest fain make me a Christian," but in the only other and later instance of the use of the name in the N. T. (1 Peter 4:16) we can see that what had been at first a taunt had soon come to be a name in which to glory, "If any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed."