The Importance of Knowing Your True Identity

Toni and I are blessed with three amazing kids, each one extraordinary and talented in their own unique way. Our daughter, Amy, has always loved the performing arts, particularly musical theater. She also loved to watch old movies. In fact, she collected them. So, being so creative, it wasn’t a surprise that she asked us if she could have a dress like Grace Kelly wore in the classic movie, “To Catch a Thief,” for her Prom Dress. The problem was it was a one-of-a-kind dress that wasn’t for sale anywhere. So, Toni offered to make the dress for Amy, only to find out that there wasn’t a pattern available.

Anyone who knows my wife knows she wasn’t about to let a little thing like no dress pattern stand in the way of her daughter’s prom dress. There had to be another way. So, they played the movie, paused it when there was a clear view of Grace Kelly in the dress, and then took a picture of the frozen screen. From that picture, Toni was able to create a pattern from which she made Amy’s new dress. After many trials and errors, as well as several trips back and forth to the fabric store, Toni finished the dress five minutes AFTER Amy wanted to leave for her Prom. Amy looked magical as she went to her prom that Friday evening.

We have a room in our basement we call the Craft Room, with shelves full of crafting supplies, tables to work on, and Toni’s sewing machine, which sat right next to the HVAC system. Usually, Toni keeps things picked up and organized, but “The Dress,” as we now call it, was all-consuming as we got closer to PromDay. Clean-up was not on the agenda the last week of the push. The floor of the Craft Room was left covered with discarded pieces of material and debris from the race against time. To be honest, it looked like a fabric bomb had gone off in the room.

The next morning, I remembered that it was time to change the air filters in the HVAC systems so I went down barefooted to the basement to take care of it. To get to the filter, I had to stretch my stride over the fabric on the floor. In doing so, I felt a sting on my heel, like something had bitten me. I changed the filter and checked out my heel. I saw a red dot and the area around it was hard and painful. The more I walked on it, the more it hurt. Thinking it might be a spider bite, I visited the Intermediate Care Clinic nearby. The medical personnel there examined my heel, chose not to X-ray it, and said that they didn’t know for sure, but they gave me an antibiotic just in case it was an insect bite.

By Monday morning, my heel was inflamed and became more painful the more I walked on it, so I went to my regular doctor. Dr. Keller examined it and ordered X-rays. When He put the film up on the light board on the wall in the exam room, he said to me, “There’s your problem,” as he pointed to a needle in my heel. Evidently, in the flurry of trying to finish Amy’s dress, a needle broke off of the sewing machine and fell into the pile of discarded material on the floor of the Craft Room. Because of the pressing deadline, Toni decided to look for it later. Before she could clean up the room, I found it with my heel. Since I was misdiagnosed at the Clinic, it moved deeper into my heel the more I walked on it over the weekend.

Consequently, my doctor couldn’t get it out, so he sent me to a surgeon’s office. To make a long story short, I ended up in the OR late that afternoon to have the needle removed from my heel. (With all the medical bills, Amy’s dress may be the most expensive Prom dress ever!)

When Dr. Keller pointed to the X-ray, I didn’t immediately cry out, “Oh my! I’m a needle!”. What I said was, “That needle doesn’t belong in me. Doctor, GET THAT THING OUT OF ME!” The insertion of a foreign object into me did not change my identity. I was still Bruce—Bruce with a foreign object that didn’t belong in my foot.

Why do I share this? Because our identity is determined by birth, not our behavior. Each of us were born sinners, because we inherited the sin nature of our original father, Adam. We weren’t born sinners because we did something wrong, but because we were Adam’s progeny. We were sinners by nature. We weren’t sinners because we sinned—we sinned because we are sinners. It was who we were. Sinners sin!

All of that changes when a person meets Jesus. When we repent of our sins, confess Jesus as Lord, and receive the forgiveness Jesus purchased for us on the cross, we are born again. At that moment, the great exchange takes place. We trade death for life, the kingdom of darkness for the Kingdom of Christ, the lineage of Adam for the lineage of Christ, and the spiritual DNA of Adam for the DNA of Christ. In short, everything changes because we have a new identity in Christ.

Therefore, from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. (2 Corinthians 5:16-17)

We are not who we used to be. While we still live in our fleshly bodies and may struggle with our old habits, we are no longer sinners. God has declared that we are now His righteous Saints!

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

The verb “might become” is in the aorist tense, which is a past completed action with ongoing results. Jesus took all of our sin on Himself on the Cross, and, in exchange, He imputed on us all of His righteousness. All that was true of us in Adam was placed on Him so that all that was true of Christ in His righteousness could become true of us.

Therefore, in Him, we are no longer sinners; we are now saints. Because of our flesh and its stubborn habits, we may still sin, that sin is now counter to who we are. When we do commit a sin, that sin doesn’t define us, Jesus does. We need to remember who Christ has made us to be—righteous saints. We are not, nor has anyone ever been, “sinners saved by grace.” We are “saints who sometimes sin.” The sin is an aberration to who Christ has made us to be. If we believe that we are still a sinner, when tempted, we will sin. When we remember that we have been delivered from the power of sin through our new identity in Christ, we will say “No” to sin. Righteousness is now our new normal. Sinning is a contradiction to who we have been made to be! (c.f. Romans 6:1-14)

Therefore, when we forget who we are and commit a sin, we must resist the urge to think, “Oh my! I’m a sinner!” Instead, we need to boldly confess, “That doesn’t belong in me. Holy Spirit, GET THAT THING OUT OF ME!”

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