"Who Am I? Discovering Your Identity and Purpose in Christ"

Sermon Series: Answering Life’s Greatest Questions: Finding Truth in a Confused World

Introduction

This morning we begin a new series entitled, “answering Life’s greatest questions: finding truth in a confused world.

Dearly beloved, more than any other time, we face a confused world. On one side of the fence we see advancements made in the medical community that is mind boggling. A man today for example on average will live more than 20 years longer over the last century.

When you consider that heart surgery in many cases today is outpatient surgery. The advancement in vaccines, antibiotics, nanotechnology, and the treatment of diabetes today is light years ahead.

Yet the converse is true today for our mental states. There is more mental, emotional and psychological disorder than we have ever encountered.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. experiences mental illness annually. This includes conditions like anxiety, depression, and PTSD, which are increasingly diagnosed and treated.

When you throw COVID-19 into the mix, the increase of mental disorder rose rapidly. Issues such as anxiety, depression, and substance abuse are on the rise. The changes in technology and social media engagement has added to this comparison culture we live in that causes stress for individuals. Sites such as FaceBook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat to name a few, creates in people an anxiety or insecurity that they do not measure up in whatever way they perceive they do not measure up.

Cyber-bullying is the term of the day and I assume it is when one person bashes someone on social media and then several others chime in to destroy another’s self concept. That person will then become depressed as they learn how their supposed friends truly think about them.

This is the world we live in today and church, it is the greatest days for the church to be the church and walk people through these fears, these insecurities, these hurts and share who they are and what they can become in Christ Jesus. Amen? In these days ahead I want to help us answer these questions:

Why am I here? What is my purpose? Am I just to live, exist, and then die, or is there something greater for me?

This morning, as we journey in recognizing the struggle people are having today with these types of questions, I want us to answer this question:

“ Who Am I? We want to discover our identity and purpose in Christ Jesus,” Amen.

And may I say something important this morning. This message is for believer and unbeliever alike. Life is constant change and we are always facing an identity crisis. Our sub-identities and sub-purposes are ever changing.

The message today is that if we keep our minds focused on our ultimate identity and our ultimate purpose, then the Lord will walk us through the sub-purposes and sub-identities that changes along life’s journey.

What sub-identity and sub-purposes are you referring to?

You walk into work on Monday morning after a 30 year career in an industry and discover your company is closing. So much of your identity was found in the workplace. Your life faces identity crisis at the time of retirement. Some people struggle with the change over days, others months, and some it can take years.

You have been in a relationship for two or three years and there is a breakup. You go through a divorce with someone who has been a part of your life for better than twenty years. Or, and you lose your spouse after 40 plus years of marriage. Let me say, I can’t nor want to imagine such a change but I imagine it is horrendous to walk through.

Dropping off your child at college, the last one leaving the house, or the one here this morning that had a large family at one point and now you are a widow or widower and you are faced with living life alone.

The list goes on, graduating school, moving to another city, or becoming a parent for the first time. Financial pressures, a bankruptcy, social expectations, or the sense of not fitting in cause identity crisis. There are many in this room that would agree that when health issues surface and it limits activity or what one is capable of it will cause us to redefine our purpose.

I believe you get it. Life calls for constant retooling, continuous realignment finding our purpose and our identity. The Lord will carry us through those periods if we realize our ultimate identity and ultimate purpose in Jesus Christ.

This morning as we answer this question, “who am I? If our ultimate identity is found in Christ and seeking His purpose for our lives, the other transitions will be just that, transitions that the Lord walks us through. Amen.

Either follow me in your Bible this morning or look with me at the screen as we focus on two verses:

2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 2:10

2 Corinthians 5:17 NKJV

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

Ephesians 2:10 NKJV

10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Prayer

Message

I will remind you from our study on Wednesday nights in 1 Corinthians that Paul was called to minister to several challenges the church faced. For one thing, the church being relatively new faced spiritual immaturity. All the things of God were new to them, especially the Greek Corinthians. They lost undue energy creating divisions, and even doubting Paul’s authority as an apostle. False teachers had infiltrated the church and caused confusion and were undermining the message of Paul in sharing the gospel.

In this particular chapter, 2 Cor. 5, Paul challenged the Corinthian church to move from an unhealthy inward focus, and embrace the ministry of reconciliation rooted in Christ’s redemptive work in the lives of the lost.

You could ask the question this morning? What identity crisis’ were the Corinthians facing?

The Corinthians (the Greeks) were still struggling with habits and mindsets from their prior pagan lifestyle. Christians, yes. Struggles. yes. Going to the Temple of Aphrodite was as common and participating in sexual adultery and promiscuity for the Corinthians as asking someone down here to go with you to Walmart or Publix.

On the other hand, the Jews that were Christian converts struggled with the guilt and conscience of still living a Jewish legalism lifestyle and found themselves struggle in areas of prior practices in their former religion.

1. Our Identity is Found in Christ

The greater identity of the Corinthian Christian, or the Jewish convert Christian that ranks higher in their priority and would sustain them in their struggles was their identity in Christ Jesus. Regardless of their past faults, sins, and guilt, they were made new in Christ Jesus. They were facing new days.

Oh listen dearly beloved, our identity as a believer is that we as well are founded in Christ Jesus. Our relationship with God was planned and created before the foundations of the world. God formulated a higher ranking plan for you before you were even a twinkle in your mother’s eye.

Your life was created for God’s good pleasure. When we come to realize that truth that trumps the role of spouse, that trumps your career, being a parent, or being a Pastor, Deacon Sunday School Teacher and the list goes on.

God is the same God and He is the God that walks with us through the various identity crisis’ we face. And all the while God is conforming and transforming us into His image. By allowing His Holy Spirit to work in our lives, He can bring the transformation from our past and overcome our prior identities and cause us to identify with Him.

Look with me at some introductory verses in Ephesians:

Ephesians 1:3–6 NKJV

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.

Paul introduces the letter to the churches of Asia to remind you that you were created for God’s purposes. All the other purposes are sub-purposes of why I ultimately created you.

Look with me at the verse just before our first focal passage.

Paul writes to the church at Corinth these words:

2 Corinthians 5:16 “16 Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer.”

I like the way The Message Bible states this. Look at these words with me:

The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language Chapter 5

Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other.

The word burgeon means to grow or develop rapidly.

Paul wrote to the church and he stated in a way we can understand, listen, I know you have some interesting dynamics from your past. I know you are dealing with some hangups from days of old. I know there is some pull from your past that still haunts you. But listen, your past is in the past. You live under grace. You are starting with a clean bill of lading. Your past has been deleted from the hard drives of life. Your past is no more.

Galatians 2:20 NKJV

20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

Let’s not overthink this word in the Greek.

Crucified. I have been executed with Christ. Jesus was God Incarnate. God the man was to be no more. He died a literal death on our behalf. He took the punishment for our sins. And, because He took the judgment, or the punishment for our sins, He paid the ransom or the price required for our sin debt.

The humanity of Christ was executed on the cross. Yes, He died, and as scriptures remind us, He was buried and He rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures.

Here’s the point. Your past, your sin, your failures, your insecurities, your frailties, your anxieties over your identity, any misgivings you struggle with were executed on the cross when you accepted Christ as Lord and Savior.

Do you know when someone is executed, what happens? You do not hear from them anymore, you do not see them anymore. You do not see them coming or going, you do not hear their voice, you never have to confront that person again.

For you see, the old is gone. You are not that person any more.

Ill. Gene McDonald sings a song

Verse 1 Today I went back to the house where I used to live My little boy ran and hid behind the door I said, “Son, have no fear you’ve got a new Daddy now” Thanks to Calvary we don’t live here anymore Chorus: Thanks to Calvary I am not the man I use to be Thanks to Calvary things are different than before As the tears ran down my face I tried to tell him Thanks to Calvary we don’t live here anymore

A. The Old is Gone (2 Corinthians 5:17)

2 Corinthians 5:17 NKJV

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

I do not in any way want to discredit the text. Our sins are gone and remembered no more in the eyes of Christ. We are new creations. Now, let’s all be honest and state that the change of our past lives takes time to wash the hurts and the struggles. That’s why its called sanctification. And by the way, one of Satan's biggest pulls on you is the constant reminder of your past through guilt, regrets, etc. He knows where you are weak and will use those weaknesses against you.

Dearly beloved, the people at the church of Corinth were not going to escape their past habits over night. There were habits in their lifestyle that were dug into their being. You see the new Corinthian converts at least initially had the same Corinthian friends, lived in the same Corinthian home, and everywhere around them were people encouraging them to do the same hobbies, the same interest, the same activities and participate in the same bad habits they had always done.

Their neighbors would walk out the door and see the new Christian Corinthian on the sidewalk and say, “will I see you on top of the hill tonight for the love fest?,” just like I might ask you are you going to watch the basketball game tonight?

Their former lives were comfortable and they were reared in a way they saw nothing wrong with their actions, that is until Paul wrote the letter to the church and provided correction to their actions.

1 Corinthians 6:15–20 NKJV

15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! 16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” 17 But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. 18 Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

Just as Paul was God’s called minister to the church at Corinth to offer correction and encouragement in the things of God, the same God will walk with you, strengthen and encourage you in your new life in Christ . God’s Holy Spirit will be with you, guide you, and strengthen you. Amen.

2 Corinthians 3:18 “18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

“being transformed.”

In Deuteronomy 11, Moses was writing a farewell message to the people of Israel, the new generation that would be allowed to go into the Promised land. Moses was writing in the last few days of the forty year wilderness wanderings and as you know, Moses was not allowed to go into the Promised land. Moses was offering God ordained guidance in their new opportunity, their new identity as God’s chosen people who would enter the Promised land.

Deuteronomy 11:18–23 NKJV

18 “Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 19 You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. 20 And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, 21 that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth. 22 “For if you carefully keep all these commandments which I command you to do—to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to hold fast to Him—23 then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you, and you will dispossess greater and mightier nations than yourselves.

God ordained Moses to write these words to remind the Israelites they needed the daily constant reminder of who they were as God’s chosen people. We as well need the Lord’s daily reminder of who we are in Christ Jesus.

There are areas of strength in our lives

Listen church, there are areas of our lives that we are strong and we can live confidently in God’s grace and know He will provide and we are at home and at peace and secure in Him.

Then, there are areas we have struggles in life

In those times, more than ever it will be the constant presence, the constant focus, calling out of God and seeking His counsel to walk through those periods we struggle when are in great transition periods, sin periods obviously, but periods that have stifled our identity, that makes us question our purpose, and we need to be reminded of the greater purpose we have in Christ. Amen.

Ill. Walking up the big hill at my house. Rather than looking to the top of the hill and seeing how far I have to go, I look down at my feet and I see my progress one step at a time.

What am I advocating? Shorter more frequent affirmations of God that I am making progress in the area I struggle.

Application: Reflect on areas of life where you may still cling to your "old self." Pray for strength to live fully in your new identity.

Colossians 3:10 NKJV

10 and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him,

Visual Ill.

Now-here is the voice of Satan telling you negative, stinking thinking thoughts and trying to bring you down.(point to your left shoulder) And, we must combat those negative vibes with the constant reminder (renewing in knowledge) of who we are in Christ Jesus.

You are new. We must remember that we are new in Christ.

His mercies are new everyday.

B. The New Has Come (2 Corinthians 5:17)

2 Corinthians 5:17 NKJV

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

Let me be very clear. You and I will face identity and purpose issues until the day we go home to be with the Lord. As life changes, we will struggle with identity issues.

Oh dear church, be reminded daily that you are new in Christ. Be reminded that His mercies are new every day. Be reminded you are royalty, be reminded you are deity, be reminded you are holy and righteous because of the God who lives in you. Amen!

2. Our Purpose is Defined by God

Psalm 139:14 “14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.”

Marvelous are His works in you.

Oh listen dearly beloved, you are not a mess-you may think you are, you are a masterpiece. Embrace it.

A. We Are His Masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10)

Ephesians 2:10 NKJV

10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

What hangups was the churches of Asia facing? The churches of The area of Ephesus were rich in Jesus Christ but had not cashed in on those blessings of understanding. They struggled with forgiving themselves, they did not understand redemption, adoption, their inheritance and they lived as spiritual beggars. They did not grasp the Holy Spirit’s presence, grace, and their spiritual citizenship of God and heaven. They had a wealth of spiritual blessings they were not utilizing and they did not understand their new found purpose in Christ Jesus.

They had no grasp of where the origin of the work in their lives was cultivated.

Where we get it wrong and we struggle is when we think we are our own workmanship. Every metaphor in the Bible reminds us of the relationship, yet we struggle with a works mindset and that if I am good enough I will be alright.

Think about it: God is the potter, I am the clay. God is the Master, I am His steward, or I am His slave. My actions and your actions are motivated by God.

Romans 9:21 “21 Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?”

Illustration: Oh dearly beloved, in this room a metamorphosis is taking place. Each of us are at some stage in our journey of being a caterpillar to the stage of beauty in being a butterfly. Note in nature of metamorphosis that the direct being has no control of their transformation, it is an act of their creator and so is our lives.

When we call on the Holy Spirit each day to walk with us, encourage us, uplift us He will see us to His end result. Amen.

Application: Commit to valuing yourself as God’s masterpiece, speaking life over yourself and others.

Matthew 5:16 NKJV

16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

B. We Are Created for Good Works (Ephesians 2:10)

“created in Christ Jesus for good works”

Ill. LAMP

Several places in God’s Word, our lives are described as a lamp.

Luke 11:33 “33 “No one, when he has lit a lamp, puts it in a secret place or under a basket, but on a lampstand, that those who come in may see the light.”

But notice something important:

When the Bible talks a about a light set on hill or the light that is not to be under a basket, a lamp needs a power source. Whether it be oil or electricity, dearly beloved, the brightness by which we shine is based upon our power source in Christ Jesus.

Application: Consider along with me, how can I shine my light bright for the Lord this week. How can I get outside of my self and my struggles and beam bright for the Lord?

I want to ask you again something. God never called us to be bench warmers. How are you going to allow God to work in you and through you in 2025 to be His ambassador in the world, in your workplace, in your community, in your family, and here at Mt Zion. God has a place of service for you here if you are willing to give of yourself for the Kingdom. Amen.

3. Living Out Our Identity and Purpose

Micah 6:8 “8 He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?”

A. Walk in Obedience

Illustration: A GPS system providing direction, but only being useful when followed. Have you ever turned the wrong way and given Siri or whoever your voice personality is on your GPS and she get’s attitude when you turn the wrong direction?

Application: Ask God daily for guidance on how to walk in obedience to His plan.

1 Peter 2:9 NKJV

9 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;

B. Be a Witness of His Grace

How can your light shine this week showing someone a path to the true light?

Application: Share your testimony with someone this week as a way to witness God’s transforming power.

Oh dear church, your true identity is in Christ. Our purposed is defined by Him with each passing day. Let’s learn to live out that identity and purpose in Him.

If you are finding yourself this morning in an identity crisis, if you feel your life has no purpose, then I ask you, have you ever identified with Christ. Have you asked Him to come into your life and take over. I want to identify with you. I want your saving grace.

Let’s pray.