Identity
18th October 2021
Our identity is very important to us. It affects our whole way of life, the way we think and everything we do. We only have one true identity and that is the one that God gave us as our creator. However, most people in this world live under a false identity and many Christians do so too.
The true identity that God gave to all human beings is as follows. We are valuable to Him but we’re flawed. We’re made in His image, yet we’re sinners. We’re talented and gifted but we’re week. And despite our flaws and weaknesses, He still loves and values us. So much so, that He gave His only begotten Son to die for us.
However, when we are born again, our identity changes and the details of our new identity are found in the scriptures. The bible tells us that we are a new creation. In other words, we have a new identity. The old man has died and a new man is born. There are many changes to our identity that take place when we are born again but I don’t want to dwell on them here. I leave that to you to read your bible to find out what they are. Instead, I want to concentrate on the false identities that Christians sometimes live under.
Understanding who we are in Christ is vital to our Christian life. If you don’t know who you are you won’t know where you are going. If you don’t know where you came from you don’t know where you are at the present. Christians who don’t know who they are, live with a false identity. If you don’t know God’s plan for you, if you don’t know God’s mission for you, if you don’t know what He wants from your life, if you don’t know the gifts that He has given you, then Satan will prey on that. He will be able to give you a false identity.
Satan hates us. He can’t take away our salvation but he can ruin us. One of Satan’s tactics is to persuade us to live under a different identity to the one that God has given us. He wants to steal your real identity from being made in the image of God to being made in the image of an animal. He wants you to think of yourself as nothing more than an animal, that you’re just flesh and blood. If you are a Christian, he will try to deceive you in order to rob you of your true identity. He does this by blinding or taking you away from all the passages in scripture that speak of your true identity. He is only able to do this to us when we are ignorant of our true identity as found in the scriptures. When Christians don’t read their bible and don’t know their true and full identity, they become vulnerable to Satan’s deceptions.
So, what are the false identities that Satan wants all human beings, including Christians, to have? There are a lot of them. Examples include the following: ‘I don’t matter’, ‘I’m not valuable’, ‘I’m all messed up’, ‘I’m a failure’, ‘I’m ashamed of what I’ve done’, ‘I’m a know it all’, ‘I have to be in control’, ‘I have to perform’, ‘my identity is in my work’, ‘my identity comes from helping people’ and ‘I need to be needed’. These false identities affect the way you live your life. So, for instance, if someone’s identity is all about being in control they will not operate in faith. Another example of a false identity is one of self-protection. This usually comes about as a result of a traumatic event. When this happens to someone, they often vow never to put themselves in that position again. People with this identity tend to have a bunker mentality, they tend to be withdrawn and they live in fear. This has the effect of limiting their lives and in extreme cases it ruins their life. Part of our true identity as Christians is knowing that God provides our security and protection. And another example of a false identity is the victim identity. When we are hurt God’s way of dealing with it is to acknowledge what has happened and then to heal or restore us. He wants us to get on with our lives. One of the characteristics of our Christian identity is that we are to live life to the full for example. However, Satan doesn’t want this. He wants to leave us broken and to have a victim mentality for the rest of our lives. He does this in order to make us useless. And yet, God’s identity for us is to be servants, to be salt and light, to be ambassadors and to use our gifts and talents.
I hope you’re beginning to see how important our identity is. All false identities are harmful to us and rob us of the life that God wants us to have. But the identity that God gave us is liberating and fruitful. It brings us peace and rest, it enables us to do all that God wants for us, it makes us strong, it enables us to operate in faith and it enables us to face all that life throws at us. So, if you find that you are living under a false identity you should ask the Lord to change you into His identity for you. And please, please do not conform to the patterns of this world. We are living in a time when there are massive attacks in this world on the true identity of human beings. Do not go along with them.