Your Identity

Galatians 3:27, Colossians 3:3, Philippians 1:21, Philippians 2:6-8

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So tell me about yourself. Who are you? What do you, what do you like? How would you describe yourself? Go ahead to even pause the video for a minute and just think. How would you respond to that? How would you describe yourself?

The way you describe yourself is important because it tells us a lot about how you define yourself, where you find your identity. Like maybe you the first thing you say is, well, I’m, you know, like for me, I might say, like, I’m a pastor. You might say you’re a, you’re a mother, you’re a father, you are a student. You know, you work here. You work at a bank. You work these other places. And we think about all these various things that we do or our relationships. And often we look for our identity there. And those things are good things. But there’s weaknesses to finding our identity in those places.

There’s weaknesses there for a couple of reasons. Part of the reason why there might be a weakness there is that those things in life can change. Relationships can change. What you do for a living can change. So then when it changes, then you can start to have an identity crisis. Well, who am I? That’s also problematic because where you find your identity actually drives very much of what you do. It drives your decisions. It becomes to be what you live for because if you find your identity somewhere and that becomes so important for you, it can become the driver for your life because you need to keep that identity. And something that starts to drive your life, can begin to do what really God was meant to do. It can begin to take over the place of God in your life.

There’s a better place to find your identity. To go find your identity we can go to God’s Word to see what God says about us. If you go to the book of Galatians, it talks about how we have been baptized into Christ. You, if you’ve been baptized, you’ve been baptized into Christ, which means you’ve been clothed with Christ. So when God sees you, He sees the perfect life of Christ. And Christ also then being the Son of God, Christ is God, God when He looks at you, He sees a spitting image of himself. Your primary identity when you look in the mirror should be that I am in Christ.

Maybe instead of thinking yourself as a Christian, maybe use this word. It sounds maybe a little bit weird, but say I’m, I’m a Christ-in. I’m somebody who is in Christ that defines you. I mean, if you look at Colossians chapter three, Paul says that your whole life is now hidden in Christ. That is who you are. So now what does that mean for how you live your life, though? Because all these other things, we think about where we get our identity have to do with living my life in my relationships, what I do. How does our identity now connect with the way we live our life?

Well, I want to take you to Philippians chapter one in verse 21. Paul says that for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. I think the second part of that statement is easier to understand, and the first. To die is gain, as a Christian, that becomes pretty clear to us. So we understand, we know, that because Jesus died and rose again, we are set right with God. We know that promise that Jesus said that when you close your eyes to this world and open them, you will be with him in paradise. And we’re looking forward to resurrection. We know that. So to die is gain, that makes sense. But what does it mean to say to live is Christ?

Well, the second chapter of Philippians helps with that. When you look to the second chapter of Philippians, Paul talks about how Jesus did not consider equality with God, something to be grasped, but he humbled himself and took the form of a servant. That section, there’s a lot of big words. It can be a little bit confusing sometimes, just so kind of just to boil it down. What does it mean? It means that that the Son of God could have stayed in the comforts of heaven. But instead he humbled himself because his father had a job for him to do. He humble himself and became a servant to live that life you and I were meant to live, but don’t. To lay his life down and to die on the cross so that he could then rise again and give us new life.

When Jesus lived in this world, he was living as a humbled servant, carrying out his father’s plan for the good of those around him. As you think about living and Paul says to live is Christ, for you life is the same way. You are first and foremost a servant. Here because you have a job from your father. That job can change over time. Sometimes your primary thing will be to take care of little kids. Some day they grow up. You know, you might have a job here and then a job there. Those things can shift. But what doesn’t shift is that you are a Christ-in you are somebody who is in Christ. Your whole life is hidden in Christ. You are a servant carrying out your father’s work as you looking forward to that day of life with him. You are a Christ-in that’s who you are.