Establishing Our Identity in Christ.
A sense of belonging is vital to our well-being as humans — whether it’s found privately in the religious realm or publicly on the national stage. Like most of my compatriots in the diaspora, I am grappling with an ongoing demand for NIN as a precondition to transact official business in any government department in our country, including the renewal of our passport. NIN is the acronym for National Identification Number. It’s about identity — identifying Nigerian citizens at home and abroad. It speaks to the importance of identity as a mark of recognition in modern society.
The word citizenship echoes concepts like group, right, and responsibility. People who identify with these concepts in the context of the nation-state are described as patriots.
Identity refers to our sense of who we are as individuals and as members of social groups. It also refers to how others may perceive and label us. Multiple types of identity come together within an individual and can be broken down into cultural identity, professional identity, ethnic identity, national identity, religious identity, and gender identity.
Moreover, Identity is important in empowering individuals to exercise their rights and responsibilities. Some people tie their identity to their upbringing while others find it in their career.
Two means of becoming citizens of a country are 1) by birth and 2) naturalization. John 1:12 says receiving Christ is the route to the membership of God’s family and the citizenship of His kingdom.
A believer’s identity in Christ is about spiritual reality. Finding an identity in another parlance, is finding our destiny. We are on a mission on Earth to find our identity.
The apostle Paul established his identity in these words:
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
Paul, in the above statement, draws a line of distinction between his old and new identities.
The conception of our identity in Christ should inform and dictate our behaviors and relationships with fellow humans. This distinction is further reinforced in Paul’s address to the Ephesian Christians:
“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 while we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:1–5).
How does it tie into our identity in Christ?
In Matthew 3, we see Jesus going out of the comfort zone of His divinity to identify with sinful humans:
Jesus began His public ministry with baptism. At the time, John the Baptist was out, calling on people to confess their sins and demonstrate repentance through immersion in the river. John had introduced Jesus, and called the world’s attention to Jesus as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).
Then, the “Lamb of God” approached John for baptism.
Why would Jesus the sinless One who was in the world to take away the sins of the world ask to be baptized like sinners?
It did not add up. So, John, at first, refused.
But Jesus was not out to demonstrate repentance through baptism; He was sacrificially identifying with sinful humans using the symbolism of baptism by immersion to show sinners the path to salvation. He came in human flesh to identify with sinners, and by His baptism, calling on sinners to identify with Him in His death and resurrection (Romans 6).
So all who accept God’s offer of salvation by grace, are called to establish their identity in Christ with repentance — symbolically demonstrated in baptism by immersion in water and in living a new life in Jesus.
We can say with Paul that we have been crucified with Christ, we (our human nature) no longer lives, but Christ lives in us.
This is our Identity.
