Identity Crisis
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But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Definition of identity crisis
1: personal psychosocial conflict especially in adolescence that involves confusion about one's social role and often a sense of loss of continuity to one's personality
2: a state of confusion in an institution or organization regarding its nature or direction
It happens when children become teenagers. It happens when youth pass from adolescence to adulthood. It happens when adults face postpartum depression, midlife crisis, or empty-nest syndrome.
An identity crisis is not exclusive to people. Institutions can also suffer an identity crisis. An organization can lose its sense of purpose, mission, and calling.
As People we struggle with this Identity Crisis especially in Society demands perfection; the world expects so much from every individual.
Demands on how to look and how to think and be careful because you can be cancelled too.
Local churches often face an identity crisis. At any point, a church can be a ministry, mission, movement, museum, or mausoleum. Congregational life can easily veer off course. When you lose your why you lose your way. We go back to the basics and ask: “What is the church?”
1 Peter is written to local churches that faced an identity crisis. These congregations scattered about the Roman province of Asia Minor had been largely ignored as irrelevant. As they grew in influence, the society grew hostile against the church’s beliefs. It would soon become genocidal persecution under Emperor Nero.
Peter wrote to these churches to urge them to stand firm in the faith. He explains what it means to be a Christian. He also explains what it means to be the church. In 1 Peter 2:4-10, Peter teaches that to be a Christian is to be a part of the church. The climax of the passage is in verses 9-10, where Peter answers the question, “What is the church?”
The church is not a building you go to.
The church is not an organization you join.
The church is not a service you attend.
The church is not a charity you support. The church is not a club you socialize with.
The church is the redeemed community of God’s people in Christ. The church’s identity is not based on our ethnicity, nationality, background, status, or agenda. It is Christ.
the Church is made of a community of Believers
when we lose our identity of who God wants us to be the Church loses it”s Identity
When you lose your Identity you need to go back to the fundamental basics of who you are
1 Peter 2:9-10 teaches four factors of our Identity in Christ as a Believer
1. TRUE IDENTITY
A. You Are a Chosen Race. Verses 4 and 6 describe Christ as “chosen.” Now Peter calls the church “a chosen race.” 1 Peter 1:1 describes the church’s relationship to the world as “elect exiles.” “Chosen race” describes the Believer’s relationship to God. This is the way the Old Testament describes Israel.
Deuteronomy 7:7-8says, “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it was because the Lord loves you.” This is the loving initiative by which God has saved us in Christ. Ephesians 1:4 says he “chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”
You Are a part of the human race by physical birth. You Are a part of the chosen race by spiritual birth.
since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;
Being a chosen race does not erase your racial identity. It transcends your racial identity.
You are set apart you are different You make decisions different
B. You Are A Royal Priesthood. The Old Testament priesthood was started with Aaron and was exclusive to the tribe of Levi. Yet Exodus 19:6 says, “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests.” Only the anointed priests could serve in the sanctuary. But in a corporate sense, Israel was to be a kingdom of priests to the nations. Israel failed to fulfill its priestly ministry. You Are God’s royal priesthood.
The is the second reference to the priesthood of all believers in this letter. 1 Peter 2:5 says, “You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
Israel had a priesthood. The church is a priesthood. You Are make up the church and you are the preisthood.
Israel was to be a kingdom of priests. We are a royal priesthood. Revelation 5:9-10 says, “worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”
You are the Priesthood to the world
C. A Holy Nation. “Nation” signifies government, geography, and citizenship to us. As a result, we do not think of the church as a nation. But it is. The church is political in the ancient sense of the word. It is a “polis”– a city-state, a community of people.
We are not called to engage in partisan politics. We are called to engage in kingdom politics.
But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
Peter uses a political term to make a non-political point. The church is not to be like the nations of the world.
You Are a “holy nation.” To be holy is to be like God. To be holy is to be set apart for God. To be holy is to live differently than the world.
As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
D. You Are A Prized Possession. Here is the first of three references to “people” in this passage. It is a collective term that emphasizes our unity in Christ. Faithful churches are not built on individual tastes, opinions, or preferences.
The church is not a collection of individuals.
The church is a community of people.
What kind of people are we?
We are God’s special people: “a people for his own possession.”“Possession” is highly valued property. It was used of the personal treasure of the king as distinct from the nation’s wealth. The church is a special people because God prizes and preserves it for himself. Psalm 24:1says, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.”
Every person belongs to God. All peoples belong to God. Yet the church is a people (the Community believers) for his own possession. The church is the most precious thing on planet earth. We are a people purchased by God.
2. YOU ARE THE CHURCH THE BODY OF CHRIST
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
For the body does not consist of one member but of many.
You are the one that sets the picture of what the Church Looks like
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
that you may proclaim the excellency of God
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
You are the evidence to the world that Our God can take you from the Dark into the light
we are to be the proof of God in the earth in Power
As a Whole different race of humanity the exudes Love
As a Priesthood that acts on behalf of a lost world
As a Holy Nation belonging to God Governed by the Power of God
As a Prized Possession of God paid for at the highest cost the Blood of Jesus
We are the Church the Community of believers with all things common
loving each other supporting each other
showing the world what Love looks like
Do you want to be a part of that ?
Maybe you say i want to know it but my life is dark and I don’t have no people I am all alone
Then you are in good company because we were all like that once lost and hurting
I know I was
But then i Asked Jesus to come into my life.
I decided i don’t want tot be in the Dark anymore
Jesus brought me into his light and he healed my hurt and made me new
He gave me a new birth
since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.
He renewed my mind
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
He made me a new creation
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
He made me new
and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
He gave me a new Spirit
And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh,
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
If you are here today and thinking I want that
this me just aint working
We want to invite you to be apart of the family of Light
the Body of Christ
If you are here and say i want tot be connected to something like that then here is your chance to join the Family and community of Hope Church
a Whole different race of humanity the exudes Love
a Priesthood that acts on behalf of a lost world
a Holy Nation belonging to God Governed by the Power of God
a Prized Possession of God paid for at the highest cost the Blood of Jesus
the Church the Community of believers with all things common
loving each other supporting each other
showing the world what Love looks like