The Identity Gap - Genesis 1:26-31

Introduction

Over a million times every month, people ask Google: “Who am I?” We know we need to know, but we really aren’t sure how to answer. If you and I were to have coffee this week and I were to say to you, “So, tell me about yourself. Who are you?” How would you answer?

The truth is there’s a lot of layers to who we are, aren’t there? If you were to ask me, I might tell you about my roles. I’m a husband, a dad, and a pastor. I might tell you about my personality that I’m an Enneagram 3 and an INTJ in Myers-briggs. I could talk about my affiliations. I’m attend seminary at SBTS, I’m a trustee for ALSBOM, and I love Alabama football and Atlanta Braves baseball. I could tell you about my faith and culture. I’m a convinced Christian, and I was raised in rural Alabama. I could talk about my feelings and performance. I often feel like a failure and struggle to feel like a fit in any room I walk into. I worry a lot, and I love to laugh. Others might mention political affiliations or hobbies or sexual attractions. But, still after seeing all of that, we ask: Beneath all of the layers of me, who am I really?

God’s Word

You see, what we intuitively know is that the answer to that question tells us how and where we fit. Thus, it’s either the beginning of a life-giving mission or a life-sapping misery. That’s one of the primary reasons that God gave us the Bible. One of the primary purposes of the Bible is to tell us who God is and who we are so we know who made us and why. So, we’re going to look at this very question from the Bible over the next three weeks for the purpose of helping you close what I call the identity gap. So, Who Am I? (Headline)

“Someone” has to to “tell” us.

My grandmother always took me down long country roads, and she’d take me down those roads so that she could tell me stories. She’d show me where her mom was raised, went to school, and picked cotton. She’d show me the cabin that her dad built with his own hands and tell me how she was born in that house. She’d tell me about who her mom and dad were so that I could know and pass it down. What was she doing? She was teaching me who I was.

I actually believe this is intrinsic to the way that God has designed us. Only humans have a self-perception. It’s part of what makes us unique. But, our self-perception isn’t instinctive or automatic. It must be learned.

Self-perception is “learned.”

Genesis 1:26-30 “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.”

What happens when God creates humans is important for us to notice. First, there is a declaration of the Godhead of who they would make us to be. So, God decides who He will make us to be. Then, after making Adam and Eve, He tells them who they are. They didn’t know automatically. Self-perception had to be given to them. The very first thing that God does with human beings is tell us who in the world we are.

That is, their knowledge of their identity doesn’t come from within. It’s not something that’s going to evolve and develop with time. Apart from God speaking to them, and again this is one of the primary reasons I believe we have the Bible, they would’ve never been able to fully understand why they were different than all of the other creatures they saw. They would’ve never been able to know exactly what they were made for or what their purpose was. God had to tell them.

So, you see, identity is not something that is self-actualized or self-discovered.

Identity is “given.”

That’s not to say there aren’t layers of who we are that are individual to us. It’s to say that these layers aren’t the most fundamental aspects of who we are. They aren’t the building blocks of our identity, and until you know what your fundamental identity is, you’ll never be able to understand how where the other layers fit. So, we’ll get there, but we have to start here.

So, who does God tell us that we are? There are at least four components to the identity that He has assigned us. We’ll just flyover these so you can see them. You can see them each time God speaks to Adam and Eve.

We’re “special” and “significant.”

Genesis 1:26-28 “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.””

Human beings are given a dignity that no other part of creation can claim. We’re made in the image of God. That's the starting line of who we are. To be made in God's image means, at least, that we are like God in the way that sons and daughters are like their fathers. We share many of the same characteristics, though we're not the same. We're made to reflect his image wherever we go and to make known his dominion to the ends of the earth. We're made for that. We're reflections of his glory. And, connected to that is our purpose. Why are we to be fruitful and multiply and rule with dominion? Because there’s a reason we exist! We exist to make the glory of God spread through us and to make known the rule of God over the whole earth.

Really, each of the other three flow from this one.

We’re “dependent” and “blessed.”

Genesis 1:29 “And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.”

We’re like God, but we’re not God. God has always existed, but we have not. God is self-sufficient, but we are not. We have to eat food and drink water and sleep at night. We’re handcrafted by God with limitations. And, we’re handcrafted by God with limitations because we are designed to enjoy God’s care. So, He makes us with limits, and then He meets our needs. He provides the food. He provides the care. And, we trust him for it.

We’re “moral” and “accountable.”

Genesis 2:16-17 “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.””

What God does is show Adam and Eve the exact opposite of what our world believes: We are not just animals with bigger brains. We are set apart. And, one of the great distinctions between us and the animals is that we are born with a conscience, a moral compass, an embedded sense of morality. That’s drawn out in the Garden. This morality is a mark of dignity and God-likeness, not an oppression. And, we’re accountable to God that we represent him well with it.

In both our dependence and our accountability, we note that we’re created with limits. We’re like God, but we’re not God. In fact, it’s through these limits that we’re actually able to relate to God. That is, these limits provide us with the opportunity to know firsthand the love of God.

We’re “social” and “complementary.”

Genesis 2:18-22 “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.”

The very first thing that isn’t good in the creation is the loneliness of man. The Godhead exists in perfect community with one another: Father, Son, and Spirit. And, in a similar way, we are designed for community, too. But, we’re not all the same. Men and women are not the same. Though we have the same fundamental identity, we are designed by God to complement one another in our roles, just as there are different roles among the persons of the Trinity. So, we’re designed to love one another, be loved by one another, and to help one another.

But, we have trouble believing these things about ourselves, don’t we? Why? In spite of our clearly assigned identity from God...

“Competing” voices “confuse” us.

In Genesis 3, what does the serpent immediately begin to undermine? He immediately begins to call into question what God has just told Adam and Eve about themselves. “God said you were special, but you’re even more special than He said.” “God said that you were dependent, but it’s because he wants to keep you weak.” “God said you would die, but it’s because he wants to keep you from really living!” You see, what the serpent aimed to do was to deconstruct the identity that God had given to them and then reconstruct a new identity that would take them away from our God-designed roles and our ability to flourish within God’s design.

Now, we’re starting to see where all the confusion comes from. We’re starting to see why so many people are asking Google who they are. We’re starting to see the seedbed of gender dysphoria and self-loathing and personal insecurity. The serpent has been working to reconstruct your identity with different materials and in a different way than God has given. Today, your identity hasn’t been constructed by a talking snake, but the voice of the serpent has certainly been present. It could be an abusive or absent father. It could be classmates that wouldn’t accept you. It could be the fraternity you were a part of in college, but these competing voices have constructed your identity...

They “build” with the wrong “materials.”

Genesis 3:1 “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?””

Genesis 3:4-5 “But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.””

You’ll notice that the first thing the serpent says in the history of humankind is to question what God has said. “Did God actually say?” He wants to create confusion, and he aims to create it by creating an alternate narrative. God has told them exactly who they are, but Satan wants to introduce to them new materials. “You will not surely die. Your eyes will be opened.” That is, you can be more than God has said you can be. You can do more than God said you can do.” You see, for the first time, the question occurs. Adam and Eve have to answer: Who am I? Am I who God says I am, or am I who the serpent says I am?

And, we can see ourselves here in the lives of our first parents. Because the Serpent’s voice gets to us, too. We have been born into a world and into families and into a culture that is constantly introducing a different narrative to us than God has declared. Some of your parents told you can whatever you wanted to be, and some told you that you could never amount to anything. Neither of these are God’s narrative. Some of you fit in with everyone because you’d become whoever they required you to be, and some of you felt like you didn’t have any friends at all because you had nowhere you fit. Neither of these are God’s narrative. Some of you grew up in churches that told you that God was always looking to get you, and some of you grew up in churches where it seemed like God wasn’t worried about anything you did. These are different materials than God gives. Some of you have adopted the relativistic morality of the culture you live in, and some of you have inherited the bigotry you were born into. Neither of these is who God has made us to be. And so, in spite of what God has said, we’ve been given all of this rotten wood and all of these competing voices and all of these confusing narratives, and we’ve been told to build a house with it.

And, the result is an identity crisis. And, we’re in an identity crisis because...

There’s a “gap” between our “given” and “constructed” identities.

You see, we all have both a given and a constructed identity. Our given identity is what God says about us. It’s what is actually true about us. It’s how God has made us. It’s who we’re designed to be. It’s the pathway to human flourishing. But, all of us have a constructed identity, and all of us have at least parts of ourselves that have been constructed from the wrong materials.

God told Adam and Eve they were special and significant. The Serpent told them they were oppressed and held back. God told them they were dependent and blessed. The Serpent told them they were unloved and unappreciated. God told them they were moral and accountable. The Serpent told them they were gods themselves and could do whatever they wish.

Where’s your identity gap? What do you believe about yourself that is different than what God has said about you? Where are the places in your life in which you’ve constructed a view of yourself with the wrong materials?

Because we learn something valuable from our first parents.

The “identity gap” can “ruin” us.

Genesis 3:7 “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”

Genesis 3:11 “He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?””

Adam and Eve buy the lie. They construct a self-perception of themselves that is different from the one that God had given them. And, it ruined their lives. Immediately, they felt something that was new to them but familiar to all of us — shame. The serpent had promised that the discovery of this new identity would lead greater freedom and happiness and purpose. Instead, they end up trying to cover themselves to hide their shame. And, do you notice what God says to them we he finds them cowering behind the fig leaves? “Who told you that you were naked?” That is, who told you this about yourself? God had assigned them an identity that would enable them to thrive and flourish as his image bearers. But, when they began to listen to competing voices and building with the wrong materials, it left their lives in ruins.

An identity constructed out of the wrong materials will ruin your life. It will bring about dire consequences. So, if you were in my office and I was to ask you who you are, what would you say? Divorced. Worthless. Failure. Free. LGBTQ. Disappointment. Adulterer. Addict. Weak. Single.

Where are the gaps between what you’ve come to believe about yourself and what God has said? Because, you see, as we’re going to see in the next two weeks. The gospel bridges the gap in a way that saves us forever and sets us free today. In Genesis 3:21 God says, “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” God made a provision for us so that we might become who He has made us to be and so that we can enjoy him to the full. And so, this may be where you are, but this is not where you have to stay.