The Truth About Identity
What is self? There is this idea that our culture just absolutely runs with; I am here for myself, to live my best self, to self-fulfill and self-ideate and have a good time all by myself. The reason for this, is the culture has forgotten why it’s here, and who made it. We were made to image God.
Even Christians today purposefully and un-purposely (or unconsciously) adopt this idea or philosophy that people are good. Because that’s all we hear, man is inherently good. The media, marketing slogans, advertisements tell us this day in and day out. Even from pulpits we hear Christian leaders and pastors preach messages of motivation, self-help and the prosperity gospel; and because of this they are getting people thinking; they need to come to church just to hear a message about feeling good about themselves so they can just get through another week. This is false and not in line with Biblical Christianity. Notice the term I used Biblical Christianity. So the blog today is about putting on the new self and identity.
Colossians 3:1-11 ESV
Put On the New Self
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
The apostle Paul is telling the church at Colossae set your minds on the things above that are from God, not sinful ones or the ones of this world. We need to be pursuing Christ and as Christians we have to be doing that daily. Not being focused on ourselves, our own satisfactions, or the things of this world.
People today are so focused on themselves, their own satisfaction, and the things of this world. Our culture today has a very narcissistic mentality, Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines narcissistic as: #1 extremely self-centered with an exaggerated sense of self-importance: marked by or characteristic of excessive admiration of or infatuation with oneself. #2 displaying or marked by excessive concern with one’s own physical appearance.
When people ask the question, who am I? What is my Identity? That question as soon as it leaves your mouth, makes you want to do something, you instinctively look to yourself for answers, this should never be our basic approach to anything. To quote a known Christian leader, speaker, and preacher, “taking a leaf from scripture,” what does it say about anything at all, before anything at all, particularly on identity and who am I. Genesis 1:1 ESV, “In the beginning God…” God is the source of all truth and knowledge, the source for everything.
We hear things on identity from textbooks like “it is important to note that identity is subjective and fluid, the same source says, “your sense of identity defines who are.” We hear these marketing slogans in our culture today that are focused on making you the center of it all, I’m going to just two for example: “You Rule”, “Because your worth it.” We have a whole month dedicated to pride, lgbtq pride month and it’s not just about sexuality identity, orientation, and marrying who you feel like, it’s also about you. You are the center, take pride in yourself, make sure you are noticed, you.
Oprah Winfrey said during 2018 Golden Globes awards “What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.” What Oprah is saying, truth is subjective because truth is what people decide it is. Postmodernism gets rid of the author of truth and makes you the author of truth, it makes everything subjective. “Individualism is the rise and triumph for the modern self,” to quote contemporary Christian theologian Carl R. Trueman. Now people are elevating themselves to the place that is reserved only for the Creator of all things Jesus Christ. Bodie Hodge has said, “To object to God’s authority: means you have a misplaced authority fallacy, you must claim to be God-thus self-refuting and making man to be equal to or greater than God.”
The question is where is our identity found? Who is our identity? Christ is our identity; the cross of Jesus Christ is an absolute offense to the identity.
Identity Truth #1. We are made in the image of God.
Genesis 1:26 ESV, “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”
We don’t make ourselves, the identity textbooks are wrong when they say it’s subjective and fluid and it comes from inside you, you are product of your passions, feelings and self-ideations. It’s not your truth that’s the most important thing, there’s actually an objective truth from outside of you, that has a decisive and inescapable impact on who you are. You can either submit to it or rebel against, there are no other options.
Identity Truth #2. We were made to bear God’s image.
Genesis 1:27 ESV,
“So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”
An image of something is not actually the thing itself, but it puts that thing on display. We were made to put God on display to reflect His glory to the world. Not our glory or glory of self, quite opposite actually.
Ephesians 4:24 ESV
and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Colossians 3:10 ESV
and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”
What’s holiness? It is clean, pure, and without sin, that’s the condition we were made for.
What’s righteousness, it’s not so much a state like holiness, it’s more like an action, righteousness has to do with doing, putting holiness into practice. Doing God’s righteous works in the world. Human beings were made to be free from sin and acting righteously for God.
We are marked by a knowledge of God
Romans 1:20 ESV
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Identity Truth #3. We are made with life breathed from God.
Genesis 2:7 ESV
[God] breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
One of the implications of the human life is, it’s an eternal life. We are sustained not just by biology, science, chemical reactions, and atoms. Something else has been placed in us to aminate from the eternal realm. That is why when our biology fails, we are still alive, our bodies die, but we are not dead we have an eternal soul. Every human life is eternal.
Identity Truth #4. We are made from the dust.
Genesis 2:7 ESV
Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground.
We are made to image God, to put God on display, the things that we have to remember and its’s very counter cultural, we are not actually gods, we are a part of the stuff of creation, we are creatures, we are created.
There are qualities that of God we cannot access like His infinity, His omniscience, His all-knowingness, His omnipotence, His all-powerfulness, His ability to self-exist, with dependance on nothing. We cannot access those things; those are God’s alone. This is why there are things we don’t know and cannot know. That is why there are powers we do not have and cannot have. That is why we are dependent, small, and frail.
The culture has suppressed the truth and forgotten these things, and this is why, we see all this mess going on out there in the culture. We have forgotten we are creatures.
Identity Truth #5. We were made for dominion
Humans leave their marks, every human being actually leaves an imprint in the world around them, bad people leave a bad mark, good people leave a good mark. That’s the kind of creature we are. Things change because of our existence, we don’t get to leave this world without leaving an imprint from our life especially on other people, for good or for evil sadly sometimes for both.
In the movie “Gladiator,” The character Maximus Decimus Meridius said to his troops, “What we do in life echoes in eternity.” That is absolutely true. What we do in life really does echo in eternity. The Bible teaches that life goes on. God does not waste or squander the life and gifts of a Christian. For the Christian, death is not the end of life, but a continuation of it in another place.
We can’t get to Heaven on our own accord or merit, because none of us is perfect, because we are all descendants of Adam. Adam fell into sin, and we are all born with that same sin nature Adam had when he fell into sin. Jesus came to this earth as the Godman and lived the perfect life we could not live and died on the cross for our sins. If we turn from them and receive his forgiveness, and trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, then we can know with certainty that we will go to Heaven.
We were made to bring God’s will to God’s world, that’s what dominion means. We have that sort of authority in us by nature, because God put it there. We are called to that kind of submission to God to do it properly.
Identity Truth #6. We are made male and female
Genesis 1:27 ESV
Male and female he created them.
God doesn’t just call you to be human, He calls you to be a man or women. To live up to the sex He has given you. To shape your life and your will to embody manliness and womanliness. This is countercultural, and this is one countercultural we desperately need.
Identity Truth #7. We are fallen
Genesis 5:1-3 ESV
This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.
Notice the interesting change from God’s image on Adam; to his image on his offspring.
Here we find the key to all our real-world problems, we are people creating themselves based on their own sense of self; if their supposed to be created by God and submitting to what He has done. Why are people rebelling against their nature as dust, by pretending they are like God and create such things as gender, sexuality, marriage, races, and the destiny of the planet as if their gods not dust.
How is it that human beings are capable of such great things, yet capable of such vile evil things? We were made great, but we fell. Made in God’s image, fallen in Adam’s image. Adam’s image contains sin, which is a destruction of our righteousness and holiness, which in turns destroys most of the other things we were made for, and it also contains death which a destruction of our eternity.
Identity Truth #8. We can be restored in Jesus Christ.
Where do we find God’s perfect image today?
Colossians 1:15 ESV
He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God.
2 Corinthians 4:4 ESV
The gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
When Jesus Christ came into the world, He was the glory of God in the dust of human flesh once again. Just like in a similar fashion to Adam. That’s means He had holiness, He righteousness, which we had lost in Adam’s image. He also had eternal life because He came from and was returning to God. He had no sin to die for.
John 17:3 ESV
And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” He came offering eternal life.
Hebrews 2, tells one day He will perfectly exercise this dominion mandate that we were made for, in a way we no longer can because of sin. He will rule the world in perfect righteousness. He has everything we need to be restored. He has the victory we need because He paid the penalty for my sin. He died my death so He could conquer it for me and those were the corruptions of Adam’s image that have enslaved me.
When we were born we received Adam’s biology; we are biologically connected to Adam that’s who we are.
We repent of our sin and trust Jesus Christ, we are actually united to Jesus Christ in just as genuine of a way spiritually.
And so, we become spiritually (in the New Testament language) in Christ united, connected to Him, His spirit is in us and we can receive from His image; in just as genuine away as we have received from Adam’s image and what happens to us is that we start change.
2 Corinthians 3:18 ESV
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
In the context of that verse, who’s image? Christ image in the context.
The Christian is not someone who is becoming their best-self, they are becoming someone who they never were. One degree of glory to another by the power of God in Jesus Christ.
We need to remember the Bible hasn’t changed; the gospel hasn’t changed, and the answer ultimately is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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