Love of God Identifies Us

Introduction

The concept of identity has become a pretty hot topic in culture nowadays. Pretty much everyone struggles with the concept of identity, always looking for ways that they can find fulfillment and really make a name for themselves. When we talk about identity, we cannot separate it from the idea of fulfillment. Really when we are trying to find an identity for ourselves, its acting like a road or a path for us to finally get to fulfillment.

Moving away or going to college, we all like the idea of having a fresh start where none of our past is known and nobody can define us by who we were when we were little.

For the Detroit Lions, fulfillment looks like winning a Super Bowl. They are woefully unfulfilled as an organization. Now in order to seek out their fulfillment and find their identity, they went through a series of “rebrands,” some pretty big and some pretty small. Here are a series of their logos since the 1960’s, and none of them were able to give them a Super Bowl win. Why is that? Its because they’re taking the same fundamental building blocks and rearranging them in a way that might appear to show true change, but the change is only skin-deep. Their organization and ownership is still just the same old Lions.

Well in a similar sense we find that we also don’t really know how to find our fulfillment, and some of us don’t even know what that fulfilment would look like in the first place. Some people would say that fulfillment is being the best “you” that you can be, and while I don’t think that they would necessarily be that far off, I think the best way to say it would be to say that fulfillment is found when we are most like what our Creator intended us to us to be like. We know that God created us so that we could honor him and show his greatness, and so we could enjoy him for an eternity; so it is when we are able to do those things that we find our true identity and fulfillment.

No identity we can give ourselves is an identity worth having

But the truth is that we don’t always start with the end in mind, and so we try to give ourselves all sorts of identities in the hopes that we can eventually find our fulfillment. talks about how we are a covetous people, always idolizing something because we think it is going to give us our identity and eventually our fulfillment.

Colossians 3:5-

Colossians 3:5–9 ESV

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices

For some of us its going to be accolades, whether its in sports or music or theater. We won’t rest until we’re recognized as one of the best, and we won’t ever find our fulfilment until we achieve the highest level. We’ll be left seeking after the next thing forever, and fulfilment will always be just out of our reach.

For others it will be academics. We find our pride and our being in our intelligence and our GPA, or what colleges we will be accepted into and eventually attend.

A big one in the world around us has become the attempt to find our identity in gender and sexuality, hoping that if we just explore that enough we will eventually find our fulfilment we so badly crave.

For others it will be the image that you’ve got everything figured out and all together, and God knows I’ve been down this path a few times over again looking for my fulfillment. We want everyone to see us as the perfect Christian, but eventually we’re alone with our thoughts and we know that we aren’t what everyone thinks we are.

Sometimes we aren’t seeking an identity at all, but we feel as though one is being forced upon us. Maybe we feel as though we are identified by those around us or by some personal shortcomings. Defined by our anxiety or depression, or by someone else’s unrealistic expectations of us.

Whether we seek the identity or its placed on us, time and time again we can try out all sorts of identities seeking some fulfillment at long last, and with each failure we will become more and more aware that we just don’t have it in us to find it. All of our identities we take on fall short and lead us further into confusion as we lie awake at night wondering if we are ever going to finally make it.

Us trying to find our fulfilment in any of these identities is like trying to build a puzzle with only half the pieces. Sure you have some of the pieces right, but you’re never going to get to the final picture until you’re given the rest of them. Rearrange them any way that you want to, you’re not going to get to the picture on the box with only some of the pieces. We need the rest of them, we need a complete and true identity, and we need that identity to be given to us.

God sent Jesus to die so that we could be made new

In his love for us, God does exactly that. Ever since the moment that humankind fell into sin we have struggled with our identity problem, and God didn’t let a moment go by where he left us without a true identity or fulfillment. God promised us a savior and he eventually sent us Jesus, his one and only Son, to die on our behalf. Jesus would die the death that we deserved and he would rise again so that he could defeat death on our behalf.

It is in the blood of Christ that we are made new and given a true identity that leads to fulfilment.

It is in the blood of Christ that all of our shortcomings are drowned at last

It is in the blood of Christ that we finally find we are able to have a true identity!

Colossians 3:3–4 ESV

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Colossians 3:3

2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Before we know Christ, we’re left alone to find an identity among the sea of possibilities in the world, always looking for fulfillment and never quite finding it. God sees the struggle that we go through and doesn’t leave us to flounder about throughout life.

God sends us his own Son to die for us, so that in his ressurection we can be identified in him. We no longer have to chase some fulfillment that is unattainable, we no longer have to wonder if everything is going to be alright. We no longer have to worry that we dont measure up or wonder what our identity is.

We never have to feel like the incomplete puzzle, because God has made us complete through the blood of His Son Jesus. He has taken all of our incompleteness, all of our confusion, all of our shortcomings and has redeemed all of it. We are now given the very righteousness and identity of Jesus himself, co-heirs with him in the Kingdom of God.

Our identity is not in our athletics, or our intelligence, or our image, or our anxiety or our depression or any other thing that seeks to consume us. Those things no longer define us, they no longer have power over us. Although we once walked in sin and darkness and were identified by it, we are now one with Christ and are seated with him in the Kingdom of God.

Praise God! Praise Jesus! Hallelujah and Amen to the King of Kings!

Run from the Old and Abide in the New

What an amazing God, who loves us so much that he would give us his son so that our identity might be found in him. Where does this lead us? What paths do we have to continue forward? The way I see it, there is only one that makes sense. We need to put off all of these absurd identities that we cling to, and be found only in Christ and what he has called us to. As Colossians says:

Colossians 3:12-

Colossians 3:12–17 ESV

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Throw off all that burdens you, never to pick it back up again. You have been rescued from the agonizing identity crisis that has plagued so many people. Put on the new identity that has been made possible for you in Christ, and abide in it.

Forget all the worldly idols that make us empty promises; they are liars and deceitful. They cannot offer you fulfilment, they will always fall short. Each of them will promise you more than they can offer and they will cost you a whole lot more than you want to pay.

Abide in the love of God, for it is in this love that your true identity has been given to you. Enter the true assurance that God gives you, knowing that your identity cannot be taken away from you and that God has already provided everything for you in Jesus. As John the Baptist said,

John 3:30 ESV

He must increase, but I must decrease.”

John 3