Resurrection 6a Our New Identity

[HKHaugan]

Resurrection 6a Our New Identity

In one of my studies early on I came across the case of a psychiatrist who was faced with a woman in his hospital wing who was out of control. She kept shouting over and over again, “I am the 17th cousin of Queen Elizabeth.” He walked up to her, paused, looked intently into her eyes and said, “It must be terrible not to know who you are.” In that moment she looked at him, calmed down and he began helping her grapple with her greatest fear. That incident is repeated by everyone every day in one way or another. It may not reach her extreme but extremes out of balance are what land people in institutions. Identity is a key issue in everyone's life and the fear of being a non-identifiable person explains much of the human struggle in the world. Everybody wants to be somebody having an identity that offers meaning, purpose and significance.

The Good News, the Gospel, tells us we have a born identity as an image of God. In Jesus we have a person who made that quite clear. He was and is the image of God in its perfection, the image He offers us to recover our real, our true image and its identity. He was a nobody who was revealed as a somebody by His death and Resurrection. He saved us from the ultimate aloneness that sin caused, the separation from God and one another. He, as God the Son, limited Himself to live in our kind of bodies. Limiting Himself to be a lone person like the rest of us, born as we were, lived as we live, experienced family and relationships, grew in an ethnic culture and tradition with one exception---He never sinned, never felt alone, never doubted His identity, lived every next moment totally confident in His relationship with His Father and the Holy Spirit. He knew exactly who He was by living out the one single attribute of God that was perfected all during His earthly life---His faith. Unlike us His every next moment was lived for His Father in perfecting faith. It is His faith that brings us into His presence and His faith that recovers and restores our faith. His life is our new life, our new identity.

Laying claim to that identity begins with how He did that for us. There are a number of passages that deal with Jesus laying aside His earthly identity to reveal His spiritual identity. Take this one for instance,
“Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”
“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.
Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother (Mk.3:31-35).”

Yet another: Jesus said, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household (Mt.10:34-36).”

Jesus was not rejecting His earthly family. Remember His two responses when He was in the temple as a young boy and His mother and stepfather were looking for Him (Lk.2:41-52). First, “Why were you searching for me? Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?” indicating His first priority was His Father in Heaven. Second, “Then He went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them.” This showed His obedience to His Father was the Father's will to live under the authority of his earthly stepfather.

It is quite obvious from Scripture what the Father's will was. Jesus would be raised in a believing home. All you have to do is read about Joseph and Mary in Luke 1-3 to see that. Then too, note the shadow of the Cross in this passage already. He had a consciousness of His Father, the vertical beam, and obedience to His faithful parents, the horizontal beam.

There's a lesson for all of us here. You can get a feel from this short section in Luke just how Jesus fulfilled the first five of the Ten Commandments (Ex.20) in His early years. Jesus knew who He was and to whom He belonged (vertically) and what that meant in the world (horizontally). Yes, He did grow in wisdom and stature with God and man from one moment to the next. When the Cross came He fulfilled its purpose and rose from the dead---for you and for me, spiritually, personally and relationally.

One more thing here about Mary. When Jesus was on the Cross He told Mary, “Dear woman, here is your son” and to John “Here is your mother (Jn.19:26-27).” He was telling John that Mary had been a faithful mother and a lifelong faithful woman to be taken care of and to Mary that John had been a faithful brother who would be entrusted with her care. Think about what that means for us. Could there be any clearer relational meaning of the Cross than this?

Notice the identity issue in this setting now discussed. We not only have who we are but also what we do, living identities with a living lifestyle, through the Cross and Resurrection. Identity problem? Identity solved! Lifestyle problem? Lifestyle solved! Right identity? Right one solved!

Now the application.

It's not only having an identity. It's what shapes it. It has a purpose. In sports whatever you play gives you an on field or court identity---the position you play. In any corporate structure its the title. In families its relational. In the military its rank. What shapes the identity is the job description, the action expected to fill all those identities' purposes. They are identities the world defines. But they end not just because someone dies but because you retire, you are no longer needed, you become disabled or you become irrelevant, old and outdated. The world's purposes end.

In complete contrast knowing God is a whole new experience. Instead of rising to the top in whatever world identity you choose then descending slowly into oblivion, anyone in Christ is just starting their life through having been given a new identity. You are an image of God, a child of God, a follower of Jesus and Holy Spirit directed.

God's purposes are eternal. We are given a personal eternal identity transcending anything the world has to offer. There is never a decline or lack of identity. Rather it is a spiritual and relational growing identity in an eternal context. While we are in this world we have a job description, a lifestyle change and a continual rising. There are spiritual gifts by which we communicate with one another and live our identity in the world. Jesus says we are His salt and light in the world.

So let's look at our spiritual identity. The big thing we need to realize is that all identities outside of God are based on what we physically possess and accomplish. In other words what we use to symbolize ourselves for self justification and world acceptance apart from God. It can be an athletic trophy, a ring, a club, a gang, a team, a career, executive position, the neighborhood good man, accomplished children, being an alumnus from college, degrees, car, home, being part of a movement, lots of friends and whatever the world chooses to lift as a sign of approval. These are all terminal. However.......

If the Lord leads you into those positions it is the Spirit that will cause you to be His reconciling agent in whatever and wherever you find yourself. Thus the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 is the lifestyle you carry in your identity as a disciple of Jesus. When Jesus said He was the way, the truth and the life, it started here as the new identity He gives us. It is His life, His truth and His way.

The Sermon on the Mount begins the new identity and its lifestyle of which Jesus is the exact image. What we want to see is the way Jesus fulfills the Law and the Prophets from beginning to end. He starts with nine 'Blesseds' that fulfill the Ten Commandments. Why nine and not ten? When you read the 'Ten', they were given by God to Moses. When Jesus came He was the One giving, thus fulfilling, the First Commandment, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery, 'You shall have no other God before me (Ex.20:2-3).'”

So it is God the Son who gives this fulfilling teaching on the Mount. Mark Twain was there in 1867. In The Innocents Abroad he penned this impression of the traditionally accepted site, Mt. Eramos near Capernaum:
“In the starlight, Galilee has no boundaries but the broad compass of the heavens, and is a theater meet for great events; meet for the birth of a religion able to save a world; and meet for the stately Figure appointed to stand upon its stage and proclaim its high decrees.“
But in the sunlight, one says: Is it for the deeds which were done and the words which were spoken in this little acre of rocks and sand eighteen centuries gone, that the bells are ringing to-day in the remote islands of the sea and far and wide over continents that clasp the circumference of the huge globe?”

The fulfillment is the spiritual teaching embedded in it to which the first 'Blessed' speaks. The Law gave us a structure to live in the world. The Sermon gives us the Spirit that gives it life. Observe how the Sermon starts with the Spirit speaking to our spiritual poverty without Him. The rest of the Sermon is a commentary on the 'Blesseds' just as all the Prophets were alerting the people and their leadership to the spiritual reality behind the Law.

So from Ch.5:21-48 we have the roadblocks to the relational dimension of the spiritual life. It's a personal foundation to check the inner sinful self and identify where out heart tends to lean as it searches for stability and fulfillment. Each topic; murder, adultery, divorce, oaths, revenge and attitude toward enemies, is a check on the tendency to make self-centered choices.

Then Chs.6-7 bring us the positive themes that build the foundation for the new life; shifting the consciousness of self to others, knowing how to pray, the place of fasting, seeking spiritual treasure, eliminating worry, focusing on being spiritually right, proper judgment, asking, seeking, knocking, spiritual discernment, every aspect delivered through the Word.. Of course it all rests on faith and the Holy Spirit who empowers it.

The healings, miracles, teachings and parables that are described in Chapters 8-25 spring forth from the life of Jesus and set the spiritual pattern for how we interpret every relational situation in order to be His salt and light in the world. The other Gospels do the same and give us the consistent pattern of Jesus' lifestyle to which we are called to be conformed. The more we study them, open ourselves to the Spirit interpreting them and let their spiritual vitality lead us, the more we build our testimony to fulfill His will for us to be His witnesses in the dark world.

Our witness is to share Jesus in such a way that others leave their past identities and find their new one in Him.