Christians, Your Identity Isn’t Your Identifiers
Emile Ratelband wants to be identified as a forty-nine-year-old male. The problem is that he was born sixty-nine years ago. Emile not only wants to personally define his identity so he can have more prospects on dating apps like Tinder, he is also taking it a step further and asking the Netherlands to legally change his birthday. As ridiculous as this may seem, it may be considered a logical outcome of a world that now views identity as self-declared and self-developed.
The question of identity is not limited to age however—sexual and gender identity are currently hot-button issues at the forefront of our conversations. As we consider this cultural shift in our thinking, we must confront our own questions in relation to identity: Does God have anything to say about personal identity? Who am I? What’s my deepest personal identity?
Not only does God care about your identity far more than you can hope or imagine, but he has gone through the greatest pain to give his children an entirely different identity. Despite our disobedience, Christians have the distinct honor of being a people belonging to God, hidden with Christ in God (1 Pet. 2:9; Col. 3:1–4).
Unfortunately, the gospel narrative isn’t the only storyline being told about personal identity. Culture is telling—nay, shouting—a narrative of false identity. As the light of the world (Matt. 5:14) it’s vital that people know the difference. When I sit down for coffee with neighbors and even members at our church, I use the following three widely believed fallacies to help point them to the freedom of the gospel narrative regarding identity.
Fallacy #1: Your personal identity comes from within. The world says that your identity is based on mainly one person: you. You define you. You declare who you are. The mantra of our day could be summed up in a line from William Ernest Henley’s poem Invictus: “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” Emile Ratelband’s desire to officially become a forty-nine-year-old is the natural outworking of the hyper individual and false sense of freedom of our day. “Nowadays, we are all free people and we have a free will to change things,” Ratelband declared, “So I want to change my age. I feel I am about forty to forty-five.”
The challenge is that self can never carry the weight of self. You were not made to be enough for you. While we most assuredly experience external brokenness, the greatest cause of most of the brokenness we experience is ourselves. You have wronged yourself, lied to yourself, and led yourself astray more than anyone else. Not only this, but it is not freedom but enslavement to be your own god. It’s exhausting to try and take care of all your physical, emotional, and spiritual needs yourself.
The gospel gives all God’s children a greater reality. The fact is that a Christian’s identity doesn’t come from within, but rather from the Creator of the universe who stands outside of time and creation. The Apostle Peter offers the early persecuted church two powerful reminders of their identity as children of God. He calls these believers elect exiles (1 Pet. 1:1). Where does this identity come from? “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you.” (1 Pet. 1:2).
As Tim Keller said in a tweet last year, “Christian identity is received, not achieved, taking enormous pressure off of us to perform and merit our affirmation.” What freedom this offers from the crushing exhaustion of self-determined, temporary identities!
Fallacy #2: Your personal identity demands external validity. It is not enough for our identity to be self-determined; others must validate it. Fragile self-made identities require constant external affirmation. When this isn’t given, we demand it or seek to find it elsewhere, canceling people along the way.
If you find your deepest identity in your profession, you will constantly need someone to see and celebrate your every task. If your deepest identity is relational, you will always be in need of constant love, acceptance, and respect. If your identity is based on an attractive personality or good looks, you will become enslaved to the treadmill or the makeup counter. It was not enough for our Dutch friend Ratelband to merely declare himself a forty-nine-year-old; he needed the external courts of the land to validate this outrageous claim!
God did indeed plan for our deepest identities to be verified, but he intended that they be verified by the Godhead alone! God the Father declares us as his “elect exiles,” but this identity is subsequently affirmed through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit (1 Pet. 1:2). Later Peter reminds these elect exiles that they “have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.” God not only declares them as children through the imperishable seed of the Word of God, but he affirms and grows that identity (1 Pet. 1:23–25).
Fallacy #3: You are the sum of our identifiers. Our identifiers are those characteristics that connect and differentiate us from each other: who you are, what you do, and with whom you associate. These are often good and important yet will never be the best or most important things about us. Many people inside and outside of the Church seek to find their deepest identity in their identifiers. Being a founding member of a church, in a position of leadership, or even part of a denomination tribe, are all good identifiers. But they are terrible identities because they will ultimately change.
I personally forget that my deepest identity is not being a husband and a father who is a first-generation Indian immigrant church planter. These are good things, but they are not who I am at the core.
An identity founded upon identifiers is an extremely fragile, vulnerable, and fickle foundation. My marriage, as amazing as it is, cannot be my identity because it will inevitably change. My profession, as much as I love it, will not happen in heaven. My relationships and responsibilities uniquely contribute to my identifiers but make a poor identity.
Friends, Jesus lost his identity and freedom on the cross. He paid the penalty of our sins against God, ourselves, and one another. He’s given to us our deepest identity as elect exiles. Our deepest identity is not temporal but rather eternal. We are not home yet. We are the elect exiles of the eternal Father.
Brothers and sisters, in a world full of changing identities, let’s know and make known our deepest identity which has been declared and kept: We are loved; we are not home yet!
G’Joe Joseph is planting Center City Church in San Diego, California. He is the former regional director of Campus Outreach in Greenville and San Diego. His passion is engaging the lost and developing leaders in the gospel. You will find him discipling men, coaching Little League, playing basketball and spending time with his wife, three amazing boys, and two dogs. You can reach out to him on Instagram.