My amazing wife Jennifer founded True Identity Ministries in 2008. It grew out of her own journey of being born with a birth defect that negatively defined her sense of identity until she found Christ. When she did He set her free from feeling a human reject by opening the eyes of her heart to her true identity – how He saw her. The ministry has since grown internationally and has moved from impactful transformational retreats to equally impactful transformational online studies.
The Lord had told her early on in life that He would use her story some day. Forty years later, that “some day” came.
For such a time as this.
While the world is experiencing ever greater turbulence as we move through what the Bible calls “The End Times,” the confusion about human identity is ever greater in the midst of it. Gender identity, racial identity, socioeconomic identity, national identity are all becoming more fluid. And causing more turmoil by leaps and bounds.
In our human world systems, people’s sense of identity is rooted primarily in outward things: how much we possess, what others say about us, what our skin color is, what we do professionally, where we grew up, etc. People are desperately searching to belong somewhere, to have something to identify with, something that gives them a worthy self-image.
But it’s a mistaken identity.
Identity based on outward appearances is a false identity, because it moves people away from identity according to God’s design. And it keeps them in bondage to lies and deception, instead of soul-liberating truth.
Tim Keller recently said in an interview that “post-modern identity is achieved, whereas Christian identity is received.” That is man’s design (make your own) versus God’s design (walk in what your Creator has designed for you).
I couldn’t agree more. So let me try and flesh that out by taking you to a few Scriptures and examining God’s original design for human identity, Satan’s falsification of it, and its restoration through Jesus Christ.
THE ORIGINAL ARTWORK
Genesis 1:26 & 27 reads: “And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.‘ So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
The identity of man (Adam means “mankind”) here is clear: Image-bearers of God, complementing each other in manhood and womanhood, working in tandem to reflect His glory and be stewards of His creation. The context of this creation passage shows them as being given assignments, a place to live, a perimeter for living. and a daily relationship with God. Hence their identity lies in dependence and on and intimacy with God, as well as interdependence on and intimacy with each other. Pretty clear-cut.
But then it goes sideways…
SATAN’S FALSIFICATION OF GOD’S DESIGN
We read in Genesis 3 how Satan, in the form of a serpent, paid a visit to Eve and talked her into disobeying God’s ban on eating from the tree of the knowledge of God and evil (Gen. 2:17). The way he presents it to her is significant, because it reveals the heart of the sin mankind gets infected with after Adam and Eve disobeyed: “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5)
You will be like God. The heart of the “law of sin at work in our bodies”, as Paul calls it in Romans 7:21 & 22, is the desire to be our own god. In other words, to identify as god. Master of our own destiny. In charge of our own life. Self-determination. Exerting our rights. Sounds pretty positive, right? It did to Eve, and so she ate. It did to Adam, too, and so he ate.
Except for a couple of things. Their disobedience caused separation between them and God, and competition between the two of them. And all of mankind after them. It opened them up for God’s enemy to keep feeding them lies about who they were. Their sense of identity, out of which all human thinking and acting flows. Because he knew that if he could confuse our God-given identity and replace it with the false idea that we are like God, he could control us. Us – the only created beings that bear God’s image and were made for a relationship with Him.
This mistaken identity has proven devastating for the human race, because it produces in us the urge to elevate ourselves about our fellow man to make ourselves look better in our own eyes – that we are like God. That’s a lie of course, but we don’t see that, and we desperately want it to be true. And we use outward things to make that comparison and validate ourselves. 1 Samuel 16:7 confirms that, when God gives instruction to Samuel about how to choose Israel’s king: “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
That urge to compare and elevate ourselves above our fellow man to prove to ourselves that we are like God takes on all sorts of forms. It ranges from the sublime (like criticizing others and rejoicing in others’ scandals and misfortunes or creating social media profiles that make us look like movie stars rather than the subjects of a blooper reel), to the violent (like racial discrimination, oppression, slavery, and ethnic cleansing). Likewise, the “in-between stuff” like coveting, lying, and stealing – they are all individual acts of sin that flow forth from the same urge to be our own god. And when the personal sin of self-elevation is brought to a tribal or national level you get wars, conquests, genocides and holocausts.
The kind of stuff Satan delights in as he watches mankind destroy itself.
In our sinful, fallen state, we simply do not realize that we are having to achieve our sense of identity, and that it seems to be getting harder and harder as the world is getting more and more complicated. We like to feel on top of the world like the man in the picture up above, but more often than not we are trying to drag ourselves out of a pit of depression and anxiety. And we do not realize that identity is a matter of the heart, not of outward appearance.
But God…
RESTORATION OF OUR IDENTITY THROUGH JESUS CHRIST
“…being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses (mistaken, achieved identity), made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God (received, true identity), not as a result of works so that no one can boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:4-10)
That’s right. In His mercy, out of love, unearned by us, He became flesh in Christ Jesus, proclaimed what kingdom identity looked like, then bore our punishment on the cross where He atoned for our sins with His blood and purchased for us forgiveness, redemption, the infilling and gifting by the Holy Spirit, eternal security, daily access to a relationship with Himself, and through all of that…
… our True Identity.
Given, not earned. Received. Not achieved. Free from lies. Free from dependence on outward things to gain a sense of worth.
It’s not just a status. He gave us the Holy Spirit to restore true identity in our hearts and transform us from the inside out. To open our eyes to the truth that sets us free from lies (John 8:32). To help us recognize, renounce and replace the lies of our mistaken identity and replace them with His truths of who we are in Christ and Who Christ is in us. That is His workmanship in us.
The result is that we are:
– Created anew in Christ for good works (Ephesians 2:10).
And according to 1 Peter 2:9-11 we are:
– A chosen race (regardless of skin color, ethnic heritage, or language)
– A holy nation (set apart to belong to Him and no longer walking in the world’s values)
– A royal priesthood (prayer warrior sons and daughters of the one True King)
– A people of His own possession.
– Sojourners and aliens in this world (attached to His Kingdom and detached from
the world).
Thus in Christ, our identity to being united to God and to each other by the Holy Spirit has been restored. The “dividing walls of hostility” that Satan has been using to drive a chasm between us and God and us and our fellow human beings are thus killed by Christ in the heart of anyone who places his faith in His atonement and surrenders his life to God.
As Christians, it is important to keep this clear in our heads and hearts as so many worldly ideas about identity are clamoring for our attention in the media. Both for our own sake, that we do not lose our way, and for the sake of the world in which the people are “darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” (Ephesians 4:18).
The despair of our days is making cracks in that hardness, and we are the only ones with knowledge of the truth and a valid answer: that God invites those who seek Him into a relationship with Him through repentance and the forgiveness of their sins and restores to them their true identity as He did in us, so that they may walk in love, faith, and confidence in who they are.