Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Peter 4:16

"but if [a man suffer] as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God in this name." — 1 Peter 4:16 (ASV)

Yet if any man suffer as a Christian.—Saint Peter purposely uses the name that was a term of derision among the pagans. It is not, still, one by which the believers would usually describe themselves. It only occurs twice elsewhere in the New Testament—in Acts 11:26, where we are told of the invention of the nickname (see Note there), and in Acts 26:28, where Agrippa uses it with the insolent scorn with which a brutal judge would have used the word “Methodist” a century ago.

So contemptible was the name that, as M. Renan says (p. 37), “Well-bred people avoided pronouncing the name, or, when forced to do so, made a kind of apology.” Tacitus, for instance, says: “Those who were vulgarly known by the name of Christians.” In fact, it is quite an open question whether we should not here (as well as in the two places of Acts cited above) read the nickname in its barbarous form: Chrestian.

The Sinaitic manuscript has that form, and the Vatican has the form Chreistian; and it is much harder to suppose that a scribe who commonly called himself a Christian would intentionally alter it into this strange form than to suppose that one who did not understand the irony of saying a Chrestian should have written the word with which he was so familiar.

Let him not be ashamed.—Although the name sounds worse to the world than “murderer,” or “thief,” or “malefactor.”

On this behalf.—This is a possible rendering, but it is more pointed to translate literally, but let him glorify God in this name—that is, make even this name of ridicule the ground for an act of glory to God.