Pentecost 10 Our True Identity

[HKHaugan]

Pentecost 10 Our True Identity

This will begin a short series on our identity in Christ. This first part deals with two general introductions, worldly identity and spiritual identity. Worldly identity has to do with names as seen in the world. Spiritual identity shows our true origin.
First, worldly identity.
Names are important because they distinguish us as individuals. Names give us recognition. Names give us identity. Expressions like ‘making a name for yourself’ ‘I bet my name on it’ ‘That’s a name I’ll remember’ carry social weight in the world. Names in the world signify the quest for success, fame, wealth and ultimate smugness of ‘having arrived.’ Either you have it or you don’t. It means becoming a ‘somebody’ as opposed to a ‘nobody’, having our ‘place in the sun’ with our elusive ‘15 minutes of fame.’ When you see the people who have arrived they are really lonely prisoners of the image built around them by others. Image seeking and making is idolatry fine-tuned in our age.
The dynamics of the TV show American Idol could very well be carried over as Industrial Idol, Economic Idol, Education Idol, Religion Idol, Political Idol, Social Idol, Community Idol, Club Idol, Sports Idol, Teen Idol, Prom Idol, Senior Idol, ad infinitum. These are the horizontal worldly goals to ‘rise above’ anonymity and the ‘masses.’ By the world’s standards anonymity is a curse and fame is a blessing.
There is a need in each of us for recognition, acceptance, control, security, meaning, purpose and significance. They are deep needs and the world offers bundles of pastimes to keep you absorbed in pursuit of their empty promises. Empty because when you have finally ‘arrived’ there is always someone breathing hot on your heels to replace you, someone younger, someone who could care less for what you have accomplished, someone who sees you as a faded ‘idol’, a distant and forgettable memory. Graveyards are full of tombstones whose names are covered with the dust of death and the mossy green mold of yesterday’s unknown past.
The prince of this world, the devil, nudges our inner needs telling us that history is all about me and my ‘now.’ He is after us to forget ancestors, their deeds and the textbook faces from previous eras. They are irrelevant in helping you get your piece of notoriety. Put aside any spiritual idea since religion is all myth and wishful thinking. Therefore, ‘get what you can while the getting is good,’ ‘this is your only chance so go for it,’ ‘do unto others before they do you’ and other twisted self-centered paranoid stratagems. You are really better than anyone else. Think that way and you’ll arrive. In the world identity is idolatry, which ends in lonely separation from God and others.

Second, spiritual identity.
When Jesus came something unique happened. He turned the world upside down. He revealed that every ‘nobody’ was ‘somebody’ to God. The Creator of the universe made them, knew them intimately and took a personal part in their lives. Mankind was God-kind. He loved them. Their spiritual nature raised them above the world and its definitions. God created all people. They were His creatures and when they believed in Him they were His children. He was their Father, their provider, their sustainer, their mind and heart.

In Jesus He showed the world the true identity of every human being as an image and likeness of Himself. Everyone has an identity higher and more profound than any worldly definition. This is why the world hates Christians and what they stand for because the world can’t control them through fear and intimidation. Theirs is a spiritual power that seeks not to intimidate but to love, to care and to bring stability and peace to the heart. Threats of government, economic, social and military power support the belief that ‘now’ is all there is and that the spirit of fear enforces the threats.

Eternal life in Jesus neutralizes those fears because He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the One who defines the real ‘now’ as Himself, the way, the truth and the life. Our present is simply a staging ground for eternity. Our identity is in Him. Our names are written in His Book of Life. Are there gravemarkers, tombstones, written records, memorials, statues, fossil remains or genealogies? They will all fade and be changed in the twinkling of an eye when the trumpet sounds and the dead, cherished personally by God, are raised to life in the new Heaven and the new earth. In Christ our identity brings us oneness with God and an eternal family.

From John 1, 12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
In John 17 Jesus prays to the Father, “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
Finally, 1Jn.3, “1How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.”

Next, how we live out our spiritual identity…….stay tuned.