IDENTITY AND AGENCY AS YOU

Identity is the key issue of the life and the self. Identity is the issue of God, the self and the Church. Your purpose in life is to be who you are in Christ.

This was the issue that precipitated the fall with the insinuation that Father could not be believed or trusted and that we as Adam and Eve were less than we were - except that we were actually sons/daughters of God. It’s significant that Satan attempted the same deception on Jesus in the bid to get Him to deny who He was: The Son of God.

True holiness is to be your real self in Christ. The greatest Kingdom fruitfulness comes from our ministering from our real self in Christ.
Lies that surface as false doctrines in the church result in a diminished identity for the people of God. A law view of truth results in sons who live as workers and slaves and gospels that make communities tares of non-nutriment and limited agency. The aim of the Evil One is to leach people of identity and life.

MORE THAN ENOUGH
The distortion of the self and the denial of the Christ by presenting a weaker or a lesser christ along with a crooked gospel, produces a distorted self and a diseased church. Every time we are tempted to think, ‘I am not enough,’ the attack on our identity is renewed. It is countered by our living in Christ and agreeing with Father than Jesus is our life and our identity and that in Him we are more than enough.
KNOWING GOD TRULY
Eternal life and life to the full every day is found where Jesus says it is found, ‘This is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent’ John 17.3 NIV. Rightly interpreting the word of truth is the result of being possessed by the true Christ and the one Gospel.
We add richness to the world when our individuality and creativity is the expression of Christ our life. When the genome of our belief is distorted into a non christ and a bent gospel, the cancer is multiplied in the Body of Christ just as genetic distortion multiplies cancer in the human body.
THE SELF AND THE OTHER
Writing in the introduction to Thomas Merton’s, ‘Contemplation In a World of Action’, Robert Coles observes of the Psychologist Erickson, “His immensely important writing and research constantly emphasize the struggle so many of us wage, in adolescence and beyond, as we try to find a personal destiny for ourselves and try also to make commitments to others …
… “We give ourselves over to others, both individuals and institutions and, more broadly, to places where we work and to neighbour hoods in which we live, while reserving for ourselves a certain distance: the right, it can be said, to be appreciative and responsive and loyal, with the obligation to find a proper respect for our own personal or private ideas and ideals.”
IDENTITY OR SHADE
Some never become their true selves in this life because they have been absorbed into a belief system that insulates them from God. Insulated because it is fixated on its own version of truth rather than the truth of Christ and His Gospel. This results in a false christ and a church of false selves.
INSULATION TAPE
Identity: Many of us are so smothered by the externalities that falsely present themselves as ‘life to the full’ that we develop a self – a self that is never our real self. Of course, we can think it is. We might think our income or professional accomplishments are us. But they are not. The real self is the you that Christ saw before the foundation of the world and the self He desires to draw you into as a an expression of Himself.
FALSELY DIVIDING
The most vitiating stifler of the true self is religion that poses as a relationship with God when it is only a relationship with the externalities of religion. The most successful insulator of the self from God is the religion of law. Its counterfeit of Godliness comes from the fact that it actually insulates us from God while pretending it is Godliness. But no. You have direct communion with God because Christ and the trinity live in you.
YOU ARE YOURSELF IN HIM
Jesus was one with His Father and the expression of His Father. He was able to say of His identity that ‘I and the Father are one,’ and more. ‘No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’ Matt 11.27 NIV. Because Jesus is God and one of us we have received Jesus’ oneness with Father as our own. Should we choose Jesus as our Saviour and our life He will be our LIVING WAY and reveal Himself, His Father and His true Gospel to us. With Christ in us we are revealed progressively as our True Self. This is sons/daughters growing into their glory in the New Birth
CORRECTLY
‘Work hard so you can present yourself to God and receive his approval. Be a good worker, one who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly explains the word of truth’ 2. Tim 2.15 NLT. Don’t pervert it according to your brand or sadly mangled perspective.
WHEN LIGHT AND LIFE IS YOU
‘When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’ John 8.12. To follow Jesus is to be aligned with the gospel of Jesus, John and Paul. You can’t just make it up. If we do, the result will be a fog of confusion and distortion. Should we invent our own gospel we will be thwarted in our true identity as daughters and sons. A false christ always produces a false you.
By clinging to a false gospel through laziness or sheer obstinacy, we cannot rise above living as a phantom of ourselves and can easily give ourselves over to opposing all that is true and alive. In so doing we crucify the Son of God again and establish ourselves as the Enemy of Truth-Tellers.
Grace is not about coming to terms with the law. Grace is Christ incarnated in you, expressing Himself as you. This is real righteousness and real life.