Identity

Who are you? Who do you tell yourself you are? Who do you tell other people you are, and who are you before God? Our identity is very important and it greatly affects our lives. Who and what you are influences every part of your life. What do you value? What has priority? As James Houston states, “Our identity lies more in ‘being’ than in ‘doing.”

Many people build illusions of who they are and mask their real selves. This helps them cope with the world around them. However, it does cause some anxiety by not being true to ourselves. Identity issues are huge these days. For example, some people identify as cats, and the opposite gender, or no gender. This is evidence of a confused culture.

Are we primarily Jeckel or Hyde? What is the core of who we are, and what are our core values? Our core values tell us much about ourselves. If our core value is to make the world a better place, we will go around not only doing good, but also by being good. Some people build their lives on Christian principles even though they may not know God personally or in an intimate way in conversion. They have not sought God, and God has found them.

However, it goes much deeper than living Christian principles, although this is a good thing to do. It is about being transformed from the inside out. Having a new identity based on being given a new heart. God says in His Word the Bible, “ I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). This is a heart that is receptive to God and transformed by God.

Before Christ, we are identified in the Bible as sinners. We are primarily connected to sin because we do not recognize and live by God’s authority and love in our lives. In a sense, we are following Satan’s way and setting ourselves up as our own God. In hell, sin will be completely identified with the sinner.

When we become a Christian and are converted from the inside out, God calls us a saint in the Bible. Being a saint is our primary identity, although we are at the same time a recovering sinner. Christian, do you know who you are, and do you live up to that calling and push back evil because of your calling in Jesus Christ to be a saint? This is a progressive process of transformation after conversion. If you don’t know who you are and how you walk in it, Satan will come against you with condemnation and strong temptations that will be difficult to resist.

A saint is what the Bible says about someone who has been raised spiritually from the dead to life, and Jesus calls this being born again. Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you are born again, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven” (John 3:3). No one enters into a life-saving relationship with God except by being born again. We enter the kingdom of heaven now, and then we learn to live in that kingdom. Jesus makes his kingdom available to all, but you must receive his gift of salvation to enter. God’s kingdom will be in absolute fullness in heaven, but our calling in Christ is to live it here. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). “Are you happy?” is ultimately to ask the question, “How is your inner life before God?” As God made us for himself, how are we relating to him?” James Houston, Fulfillment: Pursuing True Happiness, p.249. As Blaise Pascal also said, “Happiness is neither outside or inside us. It is God, both outside and inside us.”

The Bible says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17) We are new in Christ. We have been given a new identity. As God’s word says, “knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin” (Romans 6:6).

The Bible also says, “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts” (Ephesians 4:22). The old man corrupted by sin has died in Christ, and in Christ a new man has been resurrected to a new life. We need to reckon it, so, and then live it. (Romans 6:11) This is our identity. Christians know who you are and live from that basis, not from your old identity before Christ. Living in our new identity is something we do along with Jesus, “ and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). This takes conscious, continual effort. This is what it means to walk in our new identity. Christian, be who you are.

God affirms grace along with effort in living out our calling. “and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him” (Colossians 3:10). Are you the old man and the new man? No, you are not Jeckel and Hyde. You are a new person in Christ, a new creation. Your identity is wrapped up in Jesus and His goodness, love, and strength. “to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace” (Ephesians 2:15).

Contrary to many commentators, I believe that Romans 7:14-25 is describing the non-Christian experience rather than the Christian experience. (See Romans by Douglas Moo and Romans by Martyn Lloyd-Jones) Christians are no longer in the flesh, but the flesh still influences them from the outside, and the flesh gives access to sin. The flesh is a sinful pattern, of thinking and of operating of life independent of God, and these become habits. Fulfilling our needs apart from God. Operating our lives independently of God and not with consideration towards God.

Christian, do you know who you are? We are called to be saints and the as the Apostle Paul says in scripture, “I beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called” (Ephesians 4:1) This is the length the Apostle Paul goes in describing his identity in Christ, “ I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). My identify is wrapped up in Jesus. I am my true self in Jesus, not my false self in sin. Psychologist R.D. Laing discusses this concept in his book, The Divided Self. People can have various levels or expressions of the divided self.

"There are three kinds of people: those who have sought God and found him, and these are reasonable and happy; those who seek God and have not found him, and these are reasonable and unhappy; and those who neither seek God nor find him, and these are unreasonable and unhappy." Blaise Pascal.

We have no life apart from Christ. Christ lives in us, and in Christ I am true to my new self. I truly live in Jesus; I no longer live in death and sin, which is expressed in illusions and deceit. How we will live in heaven, we seek to live in Christ now. I can only move in this direction fully when I know my identity.

“This is the great paradox of the Christian life, that the more we abandon ourselves to God, the more genuinely real and unique we become as individuals. This is the polar opposite of those who have been brainwashed by an ideology, and who lose all sense of being individuals. Jesus does not destroy our person; he always enhances and deepens it.” James Houston, in his book, The Fulfilment: Pursuing True Happiness, p. 223.

We are not just what we do or what we accomplish or even the people we impress. That is not our identity. It is much greater and more beautiful than that. It is bound up in experiencing God and his love and goodness. It has a lot to do with our character. It is our true self, not our false self, bound up in sin.

Praise God for the mighty work he has done in us. Let us now be true to ourselves and to Christ. May we live with honor before him and please him for truly he is more than worthy. Eternity is too short to extoll him. He is the way of life. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Live in the fullness God created you to be, in his image. God says, "This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word" (Isaiah 66:2).

Resources

Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Chapters 7:1-8:4

David Needham, Birthright: Christian, Do You Know Who You Are?