Identity Crisis Part 1

Every issue we face, good or bad, comes down to an issue of identity. Whether that is forced on us by someone else’s decisions based on what they believe about themselves or it is our own, our identity informs our decisions. I know most of us don’t cognitively consider the question, “Who am I?” before making a decision. But I am convinced of this fundamental truth of who we are and I want to show you why and how it reveals itself in our day to day life.

Identifying ourselves in a certain way builds a foundation for how we then begin to think we should act. I identify myself as a pastor, what I believe a pastor is then begins to inform the way I think I should act and react, how I should spend my time and my money, it even gives me a perspective to what I believe some of my strengths and weakness are. It helps me to decide when I should say “yes or no” to involving myself in certain events, schedules, and circles. Because of my view of what a pastor is, I interact with some people and choose not interact or be influenced by others. I might be willing to listen to a perspective not because I buy into it, but rather because I want to understand it, so that I can then speak into it or even against it if necessary. The thing is; this is just the beginning of how I identify myself. Before I am a pastor, I am a father, before I am a father, I am a husband, and make no mistake these two sources of identity inform my life heavily. But there is one source of identity that informs every other source as the foundation of them all, and that is my identity in Christ.

Romans 1:18-21 (ESV)

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
²⁰ 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.

²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

This passage from Romans reveals one ugly but real truth about mankind. We are on our own, and apart from God doing anything about it this is where we would remain. Our nature has been so radically consumed in darkness that despite the evidence of God’s power and presence we reject Him as our Creator or our sovereign Ruler in order to determine our own course. So, we begin doing the only thing we can do, acting out of our nature and the truth of our identity as a person separated from and no longer influenced by the truest source of who we are and where we come from. If you don’t get a sense from the previous verses of how it works out for us, you might read the rest of Romans 1. I’ll just let you know it isn’t flattering.

The beauty of the story is that this isn’t all that we are left to; Paul builds to a point in Romans that allows us to see that there is a way to overcome this crisis of identity, and the influence of our nature.

Romans 3:21-26 (ESV)

²¹ But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—

²² the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:

²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
²⁵ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

²⁶ It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.