Discovering Your True Identity
Who are you? What gives a man his sense of self? The answer to this question defines your life. However, wrong ways of defining who we are can arise naturally in our hearts, and the world around us often preaches and models false identities.
The Problem with Self-Defined Identity
Perhaps you define yourself by your roles and accomplishments, your lineage or ethnicity, your job history or the schools you attended. Maybe you consider yourself to be summed up in a Myers-Briggs category or a psychiatric diagnosis. Your sense of self might be based on money, achievements, or the approval of others. But what happens when these things change or are taken away?
A Counterintuitive Approach
Jesus offers a counterintuitive and countercultural way to know who you are. Your true identity is a gift of God, a surprising discovery, and then a committed choice. It’s not something you can find by looking inside yourself or listening to what others say.
Six Basic Realities
Here are six basic realities to orient you:
- Your true identity is who God says you are. The Lord gets the first word because he made you.
- Your true identity inseparably connects you to God. Everything you learn about who God is correlates specifically to something about who you are.
- Your instinctive sense of identity is skewed. A fallen heart suppresses true self-knowing.
- A true and enduring identity is a complex gift of Christ’s grace. He gives a new identity in an act of mercy.
- Your new and true identity connects you to God’s other children in a common calling. You are one member in the living body of Christ.
- Your true identity is imperishable. You will still abide in Christ even when your present callings come to an end.
Embracing Your Core Identity
Faith knows and embraces this core identity: “I am his dependent.” “I am poor and weak.” “I am sinful—but I am forgiven.” “I am God’s child.” “I am a refugee.” “I am a sheep in his flock.” “I am a servant, indentured for life.”
The Pattern of Humility
Every core aspect of a man’s identity expresses some form of humility, need, submission, and dependency before the Lord. Our culture and our hearts might claim that masculinity means being independent, self-confident, proud, strong, assertive, decisive, tough-minded, opinionated, and unemotional. But Jesus is the true man, and he is unafraid of weakness, lowliness, and submission.
Becoming Like God
Core identity as a man leads to the calling to act like God. Weakness leads to strength. Serving leads to mastery. Deaths lead to resurrections. When your core identity is meek and lowly—like Jesus—then your calling develops into his image of purposeful, wise, courageous love. You become like God.
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