Those in Christ have been given a new identity. We are redeemed and forgiven (Ephesians 1:7-8), rescued and free (Colossians 1:13, Galatians 5:1). By the Spirit and in Christ, former enemies are now counted as dearly loved children of the Father (1 John 3:1). This identity is secure, because we are saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ (Ephesians 2:8-10). So at every point our identity is anchored in the faithfulness and power of the triune God. It is a new identity. A completely secure identity.
Our identity is anchored in God’s faithfulness and power.
The Christian life is then, in part, us growing up into who God has already made us in Jesus. As a result, by the Spirit, the Christian life will involve many moments of repentance and faith:
- Repenting of moments where we don’t believe God’s promises to us in Christ
- Repenting of moments where instead we seek to find who we are in other things, other people and other ways.
And with repentance will also be the need for faith:
- By God’s grace turning to trust what God has done in Jesus and who he says we are in in his Son
- By faith pursuing holiness and godliness, trusting that this means more life, not less.
Identity and Gospel Workers
Some of us have been set aside as full-time gospel workers. But in relation to the identity we have been given we should recognise that there are several traps in full-time paid Christian ministry. One is that our ‘do’ becomes our ‘who’. We do all these Christian things, so many good things. But these begin to become who we are; or even form the basis of why God might love us.
Our identity can, like a creeping vine, grow around what we do.
We’d hardly ever say it as bluntly as that. But we can feel it. And the deception is like the sipping of a tasty poison—sometimes unnoticeable until it’s too late. Nevertheless, side effects do show. It might spill out when there is failure in ministry—when we don’t do things as well as we’d hoped—or serious difficulties—when ministry is harder than we expected. Other signs we’re confusing our identity with ministry are feeling rocked by rebuke or correction; or guilty when we’re resting, on holiday or taking needed time off.
In these instances, our identity has, like a creeping vine, grown around what we do, even for God and in Jesus’ name—and it chokes life. We start to become what we do, instead of being who we have already been made.
Minister From Your Secure Identity
Knowing the temptations, I want to encourage us to increasingly minister from a secure identity; to put it another way: to serve out of hearts that are full of the Lord. Full of knowing that we are loved deeply and personally and patiently by the one who is our Father because of the Son and in the Spirit. This will have at least two very positive and practical effects.
We are children of the Father before we are workers for the harvest field.
Firstly, it will help us keep what is most important central. We were made to find who we are in him. In God. We are children of the Father before we are workers for the harvest field. Do we believe that? To keep this, and who he has made us with him, front and centre is to step further into life. It keeps our relationship with him from becoming merely professional; it keeps our devotional time, and even other time in the scriptures, from being mere study or prep; it encourages us to pray as an expression of joyful communion with him; it sets before us a desire to keep growing in our love and knowledge of the Triune God, and in living that out.
Guard Against Insecurity
Those with an insecure identity either minister too much or too little.
Secondly, it will give us the proper fuel for serving in kingdom work. Those with an insecure identity either minister too much or too little. Too much if who we are is found in what and how much we do for Jesus, as we whip ourselves to overworking; and too little if, in fact, fear of failure keeps us from trying or laziness keeps us from doing. Either way we are not working as to, and in, the Lord who loves us—and we have an identity problem at the core.
- The first issue (ministering too much) often spills out in pride, and an easy-to-rise anger and frustration with others who can’t keep our standards
- The second (ministering too little) spills out in either practical indecision or laziness. And our own shame or anger flairs up when we are encouraged to step up and out.
Instead, by God’s grace, and with repentance and faith, we want our zealous and secure service to flow rightly out of who God has made us in Jesus. Only ministering from a secure identity in Christ means we can labour rightly with freedom.
You Aren’t What You Do, But What Christ Has Done
All Christians have been given a new and secure identity in Christ. And for those set apart to proclaiming and inviting people to see God’s grace, we would do well to recognise the danger of our own identity shifting from what Christ has done to what we do, even in his name. Resting in this Christ-given, Spirit-wrought identity enables what we do to remain relational and life-giving. And in turn it frees us to serve, as those set free.
