Once you had no Identity
“Once you had no identity as a people;
now you are God’s people.
Once you received no mercy;
now you have received God’s mercy.”
I Peter 2:10
One of the dramatic and wonderful changes that come at the time we repent of our sin and invite Jesus to be Lord of our lives, is that our identity with God is restored through Christ Jesus. In our sin we lost it. The imago Dei or “Image of God” that was stamped upon all humanity in the beginning. You may say, what are you talking about I have only been around for 20 or 30 years, I was not even born at the beginning of time. We see throughout scripture that God had plans and designs of you and for you long before time. To Jeremiah the prophet God said:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
Jeremiah 1:5
Job knew who made him and declared…
You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews.
Job 10:11
I Peter 2:10 describes us after sin. We lost our identity we had no purpose or meaning. We were in constant search for identity. We ask about it and sometimes adopted it from culture. We allowed other humans to identify us sometimes because we were exhausted at looking for it ourselves at other times because those around us seemed more powerful than us and we submitted to the image they put on us. Some may have adopted the image of their sin: lusts, addiction, hatred, murder, envy, bitterness, greed. Sadly, some have experienced trauma that led to mental issues that have served as their identity: depression, dysphoria, anxiety and other disorders.
Sin is what has separated us from our identity with God our creator. Both sin perpetrated by others against us and sin that we willfully embraced and participated in. Sin separated all mankind from the Holy God who created mankind. We long for identity. We cannot find satisfaction in anything or anyone so long as our identity is lost.
Once we had no identity but now we are people of God. We are currently living through the Age of lost identity in America. This has been scripted in the office of devil. Carried out by thrones, dominions, principalities and evil rulers in high places. These puppets whither paid or passion driven are under the influence of evil. They have had a measure of success in confusing lost people to adopt a false identity.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 6:12
As we approach the month of June the first month of summer, PRIDE is the motto adopted by some who have lost identity. Can we celebrate what we have lost? No, we cannot. We need God to reconcile us to Himself. We need a Savior. There is hope in Christ alone. The mercy of God is the pen of God that rewrites our life story. We move from separated and without identity to a member of God’s family and a son or daughter of God.
Our identity can never be as a victim of something or someone. If we allow it, our lives will be lived as an activist. But if confess our sin and repent of it and surrender our lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ we will discover our purpose, identity and mission in life. You are so deeply loved by God that He clothed Himself in flesh and took upon Himself your sin and mine. He died to restore us to family. He rose again to help us conquer sin. You need not live your life searching for your identity. You can find it in Christ.