How I got acquainted with my identity in Christ
This article was originally published on Better, in September 2020. I have slightly edited it for this website.
For those of us who naturally resist all expectations, what sets us in motion is our sense of Identity. Even when it’s not clear to us what our identity is, we’re fighting for it, working hard to preserve our uniqueness and distinctness among people and against the daily push and pull of all the expectations we’re being harassed with. Including in the Church, or in our Christian group. We are not safe from expectations even there – because we’re surrounded by people.
We are safe from expectations, however, with God. His omniscience frees us in an unexpected and marvellous way! He already knows everything: everything about us and our make-up and our history, everything about past, present and future and all our possible choices. The fact that He knows doesn’t imply that we don’t have an absolutely real choice at any given moment! Foreknown doesn’t mean predetermined. (If you doubt that or think otherwise, please get in touch and we can talk about it! 😊) But it does mean that we cannot surprise Him and we cannot disappoint Him.
God doesn’t “expect” anything from us. What He wants goes much wider and deeper than mere expectations. The word expect also means waiting for something. That describes much better what God does: He invites us to respond to His love, and He patiently waits for our response. In a different article, I suggested another word as well, instead of expect or expectation: demand. Does God demand things of us? You bet, and rightly so. After all, He is our maker and owner and we continue to exist only inasmuch as He condescends to continue keeping our atoms together. So yeah, He does demand something of us – and, what is it? Everything.
As C.S. Lewis reminds us in Mere Christianity, Christ says “Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. [...] Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.”
Aaah. So that’s how it is. A new self, a new identity. That’s how God operates! His demands, His patient waiting, have nothing to do with silly “expectations” of the kind that put grit in our gears – but everything to do with Identity, the thing that makes us Rebels soar.
It’s really worth reading the above quote more in context – it comes from the chapter titled Is Christianity hard or easy? It’s the 8th chapter of Book 4 in Mere Christianity. (I mean, it’s worth reading and re-reading the whole book! 😃 But I digress.)
It’s very clear though that being a Christian is all about being a new creation, receiving a new identity – His. Just the fact of being human is already immensely precious, privileged and dignified! Being made in the image of God, called to be His representative! (We did make a hash of it, though. 😔) But then, what is offered us in Christ is unthinkably even more: adoption in His family. Not just a simple delegate – a daughter or a son! 💗
Understanding this new identity is of utmost importance. Personally, I became convinced of it many years ago. The Four Tendencies framework had not yet been discovered by Gretchen Rubin, and it was long before I ever knew I was a Rebel and Identity is what makes me go on, but I realized I needed to research and absorb the truth about who I was.
I had already been a Christian for 10 years or so by that time, and sadly the church I grew up in was dominated by a controlling Upholder leader and a culture of expectations that you were not likely to ever be able to meet. What’s worse, the God that was preached from the pulpit had been recast as ‘the great policeman in the sky’ who is looking closely to see whether you’re doing a good enough job of conforming to the approved standards and is standing poised to whack you when you’re not. I knew, both instinctively and from reading the Bible, that God is not like that but, after years of being immersed in this kind of culture, confusion does set in. Doubt and fear about whether I was ‘all right’ or not were always present in my heart. Couple this with the strong message that ‘I was not all right’ which I constantly received from my mother as a child, and yeah, you can tell I needed help.
I don’t recall what made me decide to do it, but one day I determined that I’d set aside all my confused ideas about who I was and how well I was doing, and instead read my way through the New Testament in search of what God says about me. I figured that God always says the truth, and if I find out what God has to say about me, that will be solid.
So I grabbed a fresh copy of the Bible and some pencils, and started with the Gospels. Then, from what I can see, I also made my way through some of the Epistles and Revelation. In characteristic fashion, the underlinings and markings do not go through all the books of the New Testament, but I can tell you that what I did get did me no end of good. It’s not like I never veered off course or descended into confusion ever again after that – because I did, big time. But through all the pain and wanderings that followed, there was always something very clear, which kept me from completely losing it: I knew Jesus was God, and that He was there and He wanted me. And I knew that I wanted Him.
Here is how I did the research. As I read through the New Testament, I marked, in a different colour for each category:
every line where Jesus says something about His own identity (including all the times He says He is sent by the Father);
every line that describes everyone, or people in general;
and every line that describes Christians (or the children of God, or “whoever follows Me” etc).
I found and marked many other interesting threads of thought and themes (it’s amazing what emerges when one reads big chunks at a time in a row, rather than piecemeal a few verses here or there) but my big interest was to find out what God said about me – and I knew that that was intimately linked with His own identity, mission and character too. We are called to be like Jesus, so knowing who He is and what He is like is just as important as statements about us as His followers (or even more!).
I used different colours for the words that apply to everyone under the sun versus those that describe the children of God, because, although many times those truths overlap, there are many that used to apply to me when I didn’t belong to Jesus, but not anymore. And it’s important to be aware of the distinction.
I didn’t use any book or guide for this research, it was just an instinctive desire and need. If it had been more structured and formalized it probably would not have been this effective! 😅 (That is not to say we don’t need to read up on good Bible scholarship, because we really, really do – especially since in a lot of churches the preaching doesn’t go very deeply into the nuts and bolts of the text.)
I invite you then, if you have not until now made a thorough investigation of your identity, to grab a fresh copy of the New Testament and some pencils… and go for it! That is what “the renewing of our mind” entails: knowing what God says about who He is and who we are; letting go of our confused and vague notions, and embracing instead His luminous truth. Then, we will not be afraid when Jesus asks for our all, promising to give us His self instead. We will no longer be stuck and frustrated. We will run to Him with all our might, and freely respond to His love with our own.
