Image and Identity Part 3: Source of Identity
By accepting God’s gift of redemption, we turn to Jesus as the source of our identity. There are many ways to conceptualize identity, but this is mine. I conceptualize identity using a combination of scripture, my own ideas based on my work with clients, as well as many of the ideas of Peter Scazzero from his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. Using this framework, our Identity or Self is comprised of three distinct parts.
1. Our Image (Imago Dei)
2. Our healthy desires and
3. Our sin nature (due to the fall)
Image includes the ways we mirror God as spiritual, emotional, physical, intellectual, and social beings. Also included as a part of our image are spiritual gifts. 1 Corinthians 12 tells us about these gifts of the spirit and how they are designed to work within the body of the church. Also included in image is our uniqueness, personality traits, and individual preferences.
Another part of our Identity or Self is made up of what Scazerro calls healthy desires. These help give our life fulfillment and joy. This part of our identity is usually the most obvious to others because it includes our roles, accomplishments, and abilities.
The last part of our Self or our Identity is our sin nature. Because of the fall, we know that we cannot be perfect. We will sin and fall short (Romans 3:23). We can become defensive, stubborn, arrogant, critical, hypocritical, and judgmental. We often choose the desires of our flesh.
Our deepest, truest selves emerge when we accept Christ’s gift of salvation, die to sin, and allow our image and healthy desires to flourish. This only works if we understand and accept that dying to sin is only possible because of what Jesus did for us. It has nothing to do with us – our behavior, our choices, our attempts at moral goodness. We cannot earn it through hard work. We must surrender. We allow God to sanctify us through Christ, to help us become increasingly like him. We do this by dying to sin:
Romans 6:3-6 “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”
Romans 8:17 says, “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”
2 Corinthians 5:16-17 “So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”
Satan will tell you many lies to keep you from living in your Identity in Christ. Those lies may sound like: You’re not enough. You’ll never compare to her. Remember everything you’ve done wrong. There’s no way you can be truly forgiven. When we choose to believe his lies and accept our sin as part of our Identity, we choose to be a slave to sin rather than continually dying to it. This results in shame. Satan will try to confuse us about our identity by using shame. If he can get us to focus on sin and the shame felt by it, he can weaken us. Repentance is our ability to recalibrate and put the shame we are feeling into perspective.
To live out our identity in Christ, we must be our complete Self. We must engage all the different components of our image (Imago Dei): emotional, social, intellectual, physical, and spiritual. Scazzero states that to ignore any aspect of who we are as women created in God’s image can have destructive results. Living out our identity by living into our Imago Dei allows us to have confidence and freedom. There’s no need to hustle for attention or strive for affection. There’s no need to compare.
Identity in Christ creates stability. It gives us an anchor. Even when our circumstances change, he stays the same. The core of our identity never changes and that’s comforting. We can stay anchored when we guard against elevating our own perceived moral or religious “goodness.” We can trick ourselves into thinking we’re worthy based on our own efforts: our church attendance, our bible reading, our acts of service, our behavior that we deem better than another’s. This arrogance is one of the sins for which we need to die.
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:1-10
Image and Identity Part 3 of 3