Life's Longest, Widest, Deepest and Highest Identity

[HKHaugan]

Life’s Longest, Widest, Deepest and Highest Identity

How do I want people to see me? What do I do to get their attention (or maybe avoid them) and why? What are my most cherished strategies? Does it bother us if we are not famous, wealthy, admired, handsome, beautiful and accomplished? Does where I live and what I live in concern me when I talk to others about where I live? What about the people I associate with or want to associate with? Where do I ultimately look for love and acceptance? All these things reflect inner attitudes that have to do with identity. That’s why David’s summary statement about identity is a great place for a disciple to start:

“I love you, O Lord, my strength.

The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God and my rock, in whom I take refuge.

He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise and I am saved from my enemies (Ps.18:1-3).”

Let’s digest the identity vitamins this passage delivers. The self conscious ‘I’ is the point of reference for David, for us and everyone. That’s where we all start. ‘I’ is the very word that God uses to identify Himself to Moses (Ex.3:14). If God starts with a self conscious reference then that’s where we start. We may be in a visible physical body but the ‘I’ is invisible. That is His image in us, the self-conscious ‘I’. But more than that it is not just ‘I’, it is also ‘am,’ being. God’s identity is “I Am.” You and I ‘are.’ We exist. When each of us say ‘I am’ we are identifying with God as His image and God is identifying with us as our Creator.

But sin distorts the picture. Adam and Eve found themselves disconnected, each alone, afraid, covering themselves, hiding, blaming each other and God for their dilemma of internal suffering. They had it all together until they decided they could make one simple decision all by themselves; tasting fruit from an off-limits tree. The resulting suffering was their inner realization of separation from God and one another. Their separation is the sin-suffering we inherited from them. If we want to be honest with ourselves and others we need to feel what they felt and process what they experienced as our experience. It’s the condition into which we were born. Sin is the disconnect in us. Sin is spiritual, personal and relational aloneness, the gulf between us and God. What they lost, every generation since has been looking for, their identity.

As disciples, this makes a difference when we deal with people who have no faith except in themselves. Their real need is our real need, to recognize that in Jesus, God has identified with us, given us an identity and is identifying with us. We don’t see, hear, feel, taste the presence of God. We step much deeper. We believe, we trust, we have faith. Those are our spiritual senses. This is where reality begins.

Sin, on the other hand, places belief, trust and faith in me, by what I see and can achieve. Sin places the idea of God outside, distant, unknown, beyond, out there, imaginary, a concept; a who, what, where, when, how and why. Spirituality is what I choose to believe, trust and place my faith in. And I keep it a private thing if anyone asks. Sin makes us feel the ‘I’ in us is alone, constantly questioning, searching, wanting, needing, reaching out, stretching our inner being but never reaching it whatever ‘it’ is. If there is some spiritual reality, sin gets us to believe we are in control of it.

That’s what idolatry is.

It can be giving spiritual authority to something that can be physically seen like a movie star or a rock star or some other famous person or acquaintance, hoping that will make me a ‘someone’ in the land of ‘nobodies.’ It can be any inner drive (physical, emotional or intellectual) that consumes us. When emotions and desires are stirred, the mind begs for meaning, the struggle to be flounders in the mist and midst of our quest in the darkness of the unknown. Sin inevitably makes us to be like comets, broken pieces of meteorites, slowly burning out, plunging through an inner space while we gaze at an outer unfathomable expansive universe shouting from our heart of hearts those persistent most deeply pleading questions, “Who am I?” “What is my purpose?” “Where am I going?” “How do I get to wherever it all points?”

Perhaps in this quest we get lost in the questions and resolve them by doing whatever it takes to avoid the inner conflict that inevitably arises when we dare face the questions themselves. Just being, existing, living in this world, brings each of us to that inner precipice of choice and decision in every next moment. The answers are reached based on who I choose to say I am, on my identity. The identity I choose to make myself known in the world around me. How do I live with an unresolved identity? The moment of any choice, any decision, is directed from the center of my self awareness, its meaning, purpose and hoped for destiny which are the motivations extending my identity.

Enter Jesus from Heaven to earth, the human adaptation of God’s eternal presence, the ‘I Am’ of all ‘I am’s.’ Jesus is the clear picture of the eternal “I Am.” He not only declares such, He is such. What He taught, He was. What He did, He perfected. What He wills, He fulfills. And all through faith. Jesus is the Person all us images of God are designed to be like. The reason we can say that is because human beings, as they are now in their fallen sinful state, will die. Imperfection ends in death. Jesus died but rose from the dead. The reason He died was because He took the invisible beating of sin on the Cross. That sin is our self-definition apart from God. It was that sin that gave Roman leaders the presumption of superiority, the Jewish authorities their presumptive religious authority, the cowering populace their fear of the powerful, all of us the weakness to yield to being manipulated and finally, the social indifference to the unjust punishment leveled against Jesus. Just as people’s sin put Him on the Cross, it was His perfection that raised Him from the dead proving His quality to be a Savior and His authority to be Lord. But above all, it proved He was sent by His Father to restore each of us to His Father’s heart and intention for us.

If you know who you really are, as Jesus did, death, rejection, unjust treatment, manipulation by intellectual, political and social conspiracy, have no ability to shake you. Are we sinners? Certainly. Do we fear? Of course. Do we make mistakes? Obviously. Yes, we are imperfect. But taking Jesus as the way to define ourselves, we have someone who redirects us, patiently restores us and grows us up spiritually, the deeper reality. We know who we are because of Jesus.

Jesus was His Father’s Son whose life was totally wrapped in faith doing His Father’s will. He knew exactly who He was and what He was called to do. How did He know? He lived in the deeper reality, the spiritual reality of truth, grace, faith, hope and love. He believed in His Father. He trusted Him in His heart. He had faith to do His Father’s will wherever He was. His was the perfect life. His is the perfect life. His life will always be the perfect life. We come and we go. We live and we die. But He lives forever. To trust Him, to believe in Him and to have faith to serve Him assures us we are walking in a much deeper level of existence. When we believe in Him, He lives through us. When we serve Him, His Spirit works through us. Our identity is a working identity, a serving identity and a secure identity.

This is why my identity is defined by Jesus. I am a child of the Father, a younger brother of the Savior and spiritually reborn in Him. All of us who believe in Him are brothers and sisters. We are important to Him. He made His way preaching, teaching and performing miracles throughout the Holy Land to make sense to me in America two millennia later. Wherever there is a human being, Jesus walked the shores of Galilee to reach everyone in every age, right where they are, to give them a new spiritual identity in Him. As long as this world exists Jesus will be there making headway in the hearts of people through the Holy Spirit.

So, when we are talking about identity in Jesus, it is first spiritual. David says, “I love you...” That fact of love is the recognition of the spiritual bond between two persons, the original toward the image and the image toward the original. It is more than emotion. It is the mind, heart and spirit of David willing to be obedient and do whatever God wants. So then he says, “O Lord, my strength.” So David acknowledges that the love of God toward him is his strength. God’s spiritual strength is the key to David’s life and future.

Secondly, David then explains the experiences of God’s strength as personal. He uses physical terrain and buildings as an analogy. God’s strength is rock hard, something to securely stand on. God’s strength is a fortress, a battlement for training and protection. But it also delivers from the assaults of enemies. Then he turns to the spiritual location of an image of God. It’s like being in a rocky cave. There he can hide, rest and refortify himself which is what caves can offer, many of which have tunnels, nooks and crannies. But this cave is in the open, that is, wherever a disciple is in the wilderness of this world.

Thirdly, God’s strength is relational. He is my shield (my faith), the horn (strength) of my salvation, my stronghold (attitude). I call to the Lord (prayer) who is worthy of praise (unquestioned power and authority as the Almighty One) and I am saved from my enemies (evil spirits employing the devil’s attitudes in self and others).

Since we are dealing with discipleship in this series, we can say that the measure of the strength we have, when confronted with any circumstance, is the love we have for God. The stronger our love the greater our strength. Our consciousness of God at any moment will determine our obedience to His will. That obedience is the measure of our love for God. The love of God determines the attitude we take into our mission, bringing people to Jesus, helping them to see Him, to believe in Him, to trust Him and walk in faith with Him.

Paul prays the depth of this identity experience for us:

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge---that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God (Eph.3:17-19).”