I was chatting in church this week with someone who is looking for work, and finding the constant rejections frustrating. “I send off my resume, but I don’t have the specific qualifications or experience they’re looking for, so they dismiss me. I know I’m perfectly able to do their jobs, if they’d just meet me.”
She was experiencing what many of us have, the feeling of not being seen for who we really are. All too often we use simple ‘labels’ for quick identification of people we meet, such as our gender, race, level of education. We create a ‘flow diagram’ based on these labels to help us to define each person we meet with ease.
The trouble is, life doesn’t work like that!
Individuals are far more complicated than a simple set of criteria on a checklist. But like my friend and her resume, we can be so immersed in our culture, that we forget to look beyond the labels. We pigeon-hole others and are pigeon-holed in return… until we even define ourselves by these labels.
We’ve let the culture around us set the definitions for our identity. Or maybe our past. Or our experiences. Or our family. And who we think we are directly effects how we act.
When a person submits their life to Jesus, a work of incredible transformation takes place. The Bible uses phrases such as “born again”, “new creation” and “the old has gone, the new has come”. Who we once were is not who we are now! So often though, we can continue to live as if we were still the same old person that we used to be!
If we want to live lives pleasing to God, the place to start is not by learning a list a dos and don’ts. Our behaviour flows from our understanding of our identity. So the place to start is to learn how God sees us. We need to know who we are, now that we are a new person in Christ.
Our loving Father hasn’t left us grasping in the dark to try to discover who we are. The Bible is full of descriptions of our new identities. Here are just a few:
You are:
- God’s child (John 1:12)
- Christ’s friend (John 15:15)
- United with Christ, and one spirit with Him (1 Cor 6:17)
- A member of Christ’s body (1 Cor 12:27)
- Free forever from condemnation (Rom 8:1-2)
- Established, annointed, and sealed by God (2 Cor 1:21-22)
- The salt of the earth and light of the world (Matt 5:13-14)
- A temple of God (1 Cor 3:16)
- A citizen of heaven (Phil 3:20)
- Complete in Christ (Col 2:10)
If you want to know who you are in Christ – get into the Word. Ask God to reveal to you how He sees you. And as His revelation of your identity changes how you see yourself, you will be ‘transformed by the renewing of your mind’ (Romans 12:2)
