Our True Identity
Ephesians 1:3-8 

When I hear a believer announce, “I’m just a sinner,” I feel like saying, “That’s what you used to be.” A lot of folks cling to a view of themselves as a patched-up, slightly-better-than-before version of their old self. The Bible contradicts that opinion: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away, behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). In fact, according to Scripture, we’re dramatically different once we are complete in Christ.

The question is whether people will trust in what they feel or believe what God says about them. His Word calls us saints (Rom. 1:7), disciples (Matt. 28:19), and fellow heirs with Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:17). If your opinion is that you are “just a sinner,” then you cannot fully experience and enjoy your identity in Christ.

Believing what God says about our new self is a choice. Satan certainly conspires to convince believers that God’s Word doesn’t apply to them. He knows that people held captive by spiritual poverty back away from opportunities to share the gospel and serve the Lord’s kingdom. It’s much easier to spiritually bankrupt someone who already thinks of him- or herself as “just a sinner” than it is to conquer a disciple who knows God is his loving Father.

Our true identity is defined not by our past actions but by the Savior’s. Jesus purchased our lives with His blood and brought us into relationship with God the Father, who adopted us as beloved children. We have every reason to hold our heads high, stand firm, and courageously proclaim the gospe

A Firm and Determined Grasp   –   And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God.

Galatians 2:20

When the Lord in mercy drew near and saw us in our deadness, He first of all said, “Live”; and He did this, first, because life is absolutely essential in spiritual matters, and until it is given we are incapable of seeing or entering the kingdom. Now the life that grace confers upon believers at the moment of their conversion is none other than the life of Christ, which, like the sap from the stem, runs into us, the branches, and establishes a living connection between our souls and Jesus. Faith is the grace that perceives this union, having proceeded from it as its firstfruit. It is the neck that joins the body of the Church to its all-glorious Head.

A faith that shines more bright and clear,

When tempests rage without,

That when in danger knows no fear,

In darkness feels no doubt.

Faith lays hold upon the Lord Jesus with a firm and determined grasp. It knows His excellence and worth, and no temptation can induce faith to place its trust elsewhere. And Christ Jesus is so delighted with this heavenly grace that He never ceases to strengthen and sustain that faith by the loving embrace and all-sufficient support of His eternal arms.

This establishes a living, sensible, and delightful union that produces streams of love, confidence, sympathy, contentment, and joy, from which both the bride and Bridegroom love to drink. When the soul can clearly see this oneness between itself and Christ, the pulse may be felt as beating for both, and the one blood as flowing through the veins of each. Then the heart is as near heaven as it can be on earth and is prepared for the enjoyment of the most sublime and spiritual kind of fellowship.

Lord, give me such a faith as this,

And then, whate’er may come,

I taste e’en now the hallowed bliss,

Of an eternal home.

The family reading plan for December 28, 2011

2 Chronicles 33 | Revelation 19