Shame and Identity, Part 2: Where Does Our True Identity Come From?
Do we have the right to determine our own identity? Are we masters of our own fate and captains of our own souls?
Genesis 1:27 tells us that God created us. As our creator, He knows how we are designed. He knows our essence. He even knows our worth.
Genesis 1:26 says that of all the incredible things God created, only we, humans, reflect His image and likeness.
Think about that for a second.
God is the Ultimate in this universe, and we reflect His image. That means our worth couldn’t be any higher. We do not determine our sense of self, but our sense of self has already been determined by One far greater than us: God Himself.
This implies that every person on the planet - even the homeless, drug-addicted thief - has incredible worth and dignity just because they are human.
Humans who believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ have an even more distinct identity. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” For those of us who are Christians, this verse says that we are slaves rather than independent and free beings. Slaves don’t have the right to determine their identity. The slave carries the identity of what their master says they are.
So who is our master? Who bought us?
Jesus Christ bought us when, after living a sinless life, He was wrongfully tried, convicted, tortured, mocked, and then crucified. While on the cross, God transferred every ounce of sin debt we have accrued and will ever accrue to Jesus. Then, in under six hours, God poured an eternity’s worth of His wrath onto Christ. Jesus died. Three days later, He was resurrected, proving that our sin debt had been paid in full.
When He gave us faith to believe in this Gospel, we were bought, adopted into His family, and given His sinless record, permanently transferred onto us. Thus, we were given an identity based on Christ’s performance, not ours.
Our identity is now fixed and cannot be changed.
This means that, because we as Believers are created and bought, our identity comes from God and can never come from us or others, no matter what we feel, think, believe, experience, or are told.
Anything other than what God says about us is a lie.
Tomorrow, we will learn more about our identity and start getting grounded in it so we believe it in our heads and hearts.
To read more on what Scripture says about this, see Genesis 1:27, Genesis 1:26, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20.
Prayer: Father, have You really so radically changed me? Have You really bought me and made me Your own? Thank You for loving me so deeply. It is so much better to be Your creature and Your slave than to delude myself into believing I am my own master. Please help me understand who I am and believe my true identity from my heart.
Chew On This:
What comes up when you think about Jesus paying the eternity’s worth of God’s wrath you were supposed to pay?
To continue to part 3 of our shame and identity series, click here. To go back to part 1, click here