Paul presents in
Ephesians a great manual on “gospel-centered” living. He uses the phrases with
Christ, in Christ, through Christ, with Him, in Him, and through Him over 30
times in Ephesians' six short chapters. The gospel, we see, has not just given
us access to God through Christ, but it has also included us in Christ. It has
sealed us in Him—a phrase that would sound blasphemous if the Bible did not say
it first.
"In Him,
you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your
salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of
promise" (Eph. 1:13, NASB).
Our inclusion
into Christ changes everything. It gives us a brand new identity—righteous,
virtuous and powerful—because it is His identity.
Our identity is
our sense of self. It is the thing that gives us continuity in how we interact
with others despite changes in our circumstances. We often identify ourselves
by lesser things than how God identifies us. Some of us identify ourselves by
our career, our relationship status, or our children.
I have been a
middle school, high school and college math teacher, jobs in which I found a
great deal of personal fulfillment. Now I am a wife and mother. On the side, I
am an author. Depending on the season of life, I have looked to each role to
feel good about myself, to identify myself positively. But those are just roles
I steward for a season. They are not my ultimate identity.
Even being the
daughter of a family firmly rooted for generations in the low country of South
Carolina does not ultimately define me. Jesus Christ, along with all His name
invokes, defines me both here on earth and for eternity in heaven. He is my
identity because I am in Him.
Practically
speaking, when I mix up my roles at any given stage of life with my ultimate
identity, I end up in idolatry. At the stage of life I am now as wife, mom, and
author, my husband and children cannot be my identity. I cannot pin all of my
hopes for the future on their personal successes. It is not fair to them, and
it keeps me from placing my hope for the future in God’s hands. They become my
idols when I do that.
I also cannot
place my hopes for feeling good about myself on the books I write. It did not
take long after publishing my first book to receive criticism from a reviewer.
I figured out quickly that I would be undone if I allowed the way my books were
received to make me feel good or bad about myself. Instead, God calls me to be
a good steward of my roles of wife, mom, and author, not an idolater who looks
to her husband, children, or books (or whatever stewardship God has given at
the time) for her sense of personal achievement.
The problem with
idols is not that they will not affirm us and satisfy us in the way that we
long. The problem is they cannot. It is not in their power. We devastate
relationships in our lives when we look to certain people to meet needs in us
God never intended them to meet.
A spouse,
friend, or child may try for a season to fill those needs and make us happy,
but at some point, they will become so discouraged by the utter depth of our
need and our inability to be satisfied with anything they do that they will
push us away, perhaps even severing the relationship completely.
Jesus alone is our
ultimate source of identity. But what exactly does it mean for us to find our
identity in Christ? The Bible uses several word pictures which I find helpful
to communicate the details of our relationship with Christ. The Word paints
believers at multiple places in Scripture as, first, Christ's cherished bride. By
Wendy Alsup
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