chrēstos

The major lexica derive χρηστός from χράομαι ("to use"), giving it an original force of "usable, serviceable, fit for use" (BDAG 1090; LSJ s.v.). Konrad Weiss (TDNT 9:483-92) traces a three-stage arc: "useful" in early Ionic prose; "morally good, upright" in Attic prose and drama, standardly opposed to πονηρός and μοχθηρός; and "kind, benevolent, clement" in Hellenistic authors, where the word-group becomes a term of ruler-ideology and civic benefaction. The documentary evidence collected in Moulton and Milligan and in Spicq (TLNT 3:511-16) attests χρηστός as one of the commonest personal names of slaves and freedmen, as the funerary epithet χρηστὲ χαῖρε, as the polite vocative ὦ χρηστέ ("my good sir"), and as a culinary term for mellow wine, the usage standing behind Luke 5:39. In the Septuagint the adjective occurs over sixty times and carries the liturgical refrain ὅτι χρηστὸς κύριος (Ps 24[25]:8; 33[34]:9; 99[100]:5; 105[106]:1; 117[118]:1), of which Ps 33(34):9 is cited at 1 Peter 2:3; Muraoka's Septuagint lexicon separates the benevolent sense from the morally upright one. 1 Corinthians 15:33 quotes Menander (Thais, fr. 218), φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρηστὰ ὁμιλίαι κακαί, where the adjective bears the Attic ethical sense. Because η and ι had converged in imperial pronunciation, χρηστός and Χριστός were homophones by the mid-first century: Codex Sinaiticus originally reads χρηστιανοι at Acts 11:26 and 1 Peter 4:16, and the apparatus at 1 Peter 2:3 records the christological reading. Trench's Synonyms §63, written on the cognate noun, remains the standard point of departure for distinguishing this word-group from ἀγαθός and ἀγαθωσύνη, though modern lexicography treats his contrast as a tendency rather than a rule.