Many within the church where I (Michelle) serve have adult children who are not walking with the Lord. The children were raised in the church, had daily family devotionals growing up, and attended youth group and church camp, but they have not chosen to follow the faith they were raised in. Some have chosen to completely disregard all practices of Christianity, and many have become post-Christian in their beliefs.
As these kids become adults, it is easy, as parents, to look back and see the mistakes we’ve made and sit in those errors. A close friend, “Sarah,” was divorced and for her kids’ entire lives has had to take full responsibility for her children’s spiritual development. As adults, her children are choosing lifestyles that are not godly, and for many years those feelings of failure have paralyzed her. Her heart is obviously broken for her kids, but she also is completely defeated personally, as she has her identity wrapped up in the outcome of her children’s lives and faith. Sarah’s foundation is torn apart. Ever had your identity wrapped up in someone else’s success or failure?
You might know “Steve.” (You might be “Steve.”) Steve is, by worldly standards, very successful. He owns his own business, and it exceeds projections for sales every year. He works hard, and his family lives in a beautiful home and has all they could wish for. From the outside, Steve has it all, and his family and their lives are running successfully and smoothly. Others are often envious of his family. The problem is that his identity is firmly in what the world says he is, not ever really considering who God says he is and how to live from that identity.
“The problem is that his identity is firmly in what the world says he is, not ever really considering who God says he is and how to live from that identity.”
At home he is distracted, and he goes to church more out of obligation than a yearning for the Lord or for serving God’s people. He thinks he can handle it all himself. He is completely self-reliant and proud of it. When given the option, he donates money instead of serving those in need, believing he is a generous person—and the world would agree. His marriage is relatively peaceful, but there’s not a deep connection grounded in the Lord.
So when his sales start to crash and his relationship with his wife becomes strained, he feels like a failure and numbs the negativity with alcohol and sports, blowing off steam regularly. He continues to work hard but inside feels lost. His peace is conditional on the circumstances around him, on how his life is turning out, as the world sees it. When sales are up and his wife has all the stuff she wants, life is good. He is a success. When sales are bad, life is rough. Steve believes he is a failure. If only “fill-in-the-blank” would change, everything would be fine. The only way is to work harder and medicate until things get better.
What he really needs to do is to completely surrender to the life Christ has for him and truly live out of his identity in Christ. That new identity has nothing to do with his worldly success, but everything to do who God says he is. But Steve has confused his role as provider and his status as an achiever with his identity.
Identity in Christ: “That new identity has nothing to do with his worldly success, but everything to do who God says he is.”
Confusing Role with Identity
It’s easy to confuse our role, whether good or bad—parent, child, financial provider, victim, worker, business owner, homemaker, pastor, addict—with our identity. When we forget our unchanging identity in Christ, we allow the outcome of these roles, whether good or bad, to define us. It becomes about our performance, or even other people’s performance, like those of our kids. If my business is successful, then I am successful. If my kids are healthy and happy, then I’ve done everything right and I feel good. But if I get fired or my kids are not believers, it crushes my soul. And the result is not just the sadness that comes from disappointment but also a deep belief in the lie that I am not worth enough. I am not whole. I am identified by my losses.
The enemy then uses these losses to solidify us in the lies he is telling us. They are proof that I’m not worthy of love, I’m not accepted by God or my friends, I’ve wasted my life. Often we let the opinions of our family and others define our core identity. The outcomes of these roles define us. They allow us to create an image that the world sees and we believe.
Even the people who should be most firmly established in their identity in Christ can get so busy looking at the outcomes of their roles that they forget their identity. This can happen when Christian parents become overly focused on kids or careers. Even in the church, leaders can become so focused on the number of people in the seats on Sunday morning or the successful programs they put on that they forget who created them to do this work in the first place. They can forget they are made in God’s image and for his glory, not our own. On what are we basing our value and building our lives, and how does that measure up to God’s plan for our lives?
“Often we let the opinions of our family and others define our core identity.”
Misplaced Confidence
When it comes to finding our identity in Christ, rather than in our roles, there’s no better mentor than the apostle Paul. In church, we typically spend a lot of justified time in the writings of Paul, but before he was an apostle, he was a devoted Pharisee who hated the community of Jesus followers. He is first mentioned in Acts 7:58 as Luke writes about the stoning of Stephen. Luke writes that the people were laying coats at the feet of a young man named Saul, who clearly approved of the stoning. After this first martyrdom, Saul began to do whatever he could to destroy all the churches. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.
Saul wasn’t just ambivalent toward the church; he persecuted the believers and was convinced that he was completely justified in doing so. And he was very successful! He was praised for what he was doing and found his worth in his success as a well-respected scriptural expert, zealous for his historic faith. He remained relentless in his pursuit of the Christians until he became one.
Identity in Christ: “When it comes to finding our identity in Christ, rather than in our roles, there’s no better mentor than the apostle Paul.”
Saul was certain he was right in the eyes of God and his peers—until he had a radical encounter with Jesus. In Acts 9:4, Jesus appeared to him and asked him why he was persecuting him. As Saul began to get to know Jesus, he traded all the former roles that used to form his identity. Traded for what? For an unshakable identity in knowing Jesus. Here’s how he put it in Philippians 3:4b–11 (NIV):
“If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless. But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”
The persecutor went on to become the persecuted. The renowned Jewish Pharisee became hated and hunted by his countrymen. But that was okay because knowing Jesus was what mattered. That was his identity now. He now had a kingdom purpose, and it didn’t matter who the religious elite said he was. It mattered who God said he was.
Identity in Christ: “He now had a kingdom purpose, and it didn’t matter who the religious elite said he was. It mattered who God said he was.”
Interestingly, around the time of his first missionary journey, the New Testament goes from using his Jewish name “Saul” to predominately using the Latin “Paul.” Why? Because, with his newfound identity in Christ, he began traveling the Roman world telling people about Jesus, and it made sense to use his Latin name in these contexts. Finding our true identity frees us up to submit to God’s adventure for our lives and embrace new, unfamiliar roles in the process.
Asking the Tough Questions
When we choose to define our identity by our role and what we do—mother/father, wife/husband, student, business owner, victim, manager, athlete, pastor, addict—we are setting ourselves up to be on either the winning team or the losing team. There is often nothing in between. We are either killing it in our day-to-day lives or we’re ashamed and beaten down by our failures or by the failures of the people we feel responsible for. It’s a daily battle to remember to find our footing on solid ground. Otherwise, each success or failure can puff us up in pride or cut us down in self-hatred.
When we ground our identity in our roles and our performance, rest isn’t possible because the next achievement is always necessary to attain the goal of peace. But that isn’t where our peace comes from as Christians. God isn’t keeping a scorecard. He isn’t putting checks in the world’s boxes of wins and losses. He wants a relationship with each of us, a relationship of knowing and loving each other. He wants us to know him and for our lives to be built around who he says we are.
Identity in Christ: “He wants us to know him and for our lives to be built around who he says we are.”
Have you been willing to open up your heart and mind to have an identity-forming encounter with Jesus? Take time to ask the hard questions: Have you been grounding your identity in your role and performance—what your friends think of you, how many zeroes are on your paycheck, your status as a victim of the system, your role in the family? Who does God say you are? Have you been forgetting that it is God who has provided you with a family and friends, that he has given you the aptitude to gain the education you needed for your career, that he has allowed you to have success in certain areas of your life? Without those roles and positions, would you still feel whole? Would you be at peace knowing that you are complete in who God says you are, made in his image and for his glory?
Our new identity in Christ changes everything. We are a new creation in him. He defines us, and our identity is dependent on his grace, not our performance. Our identity doesn’t depend on our to-do-list, our five-year goals, or what the world or even the church defines as success. Saul was very successful according to the standards of his fellow Pharisees, but not as defined by Jesus. Jesus had to make a radical change in Saul’s life to redefine him.
Jesus wants to redefine you too. He wants you to shed your narrow view of who you are and how you and the world around you define success to see yourself through the lens of infinite possibilities as you find your freedom in being exactly who God already calls you: his chosen one, his child, righteous, forgiven, free.
Identity in Christ: “His chosen one, his child, righteous, forgiven, free.”
What made the difference for Paul? An encounter with Jesus and his people. Even when you have accepted in your mind that your identity is found in Christ, you will need regular interaction with God and his people to remind you that you are loved as the person you are in Christ, not loved if you are a success in your roles. We are not meant to walk through life alone. Paul tells us of the time he spent with the apostles, learning and being shaped by those who spent time with Jesus. We want to encourage you to bring these hard questions before God and others, questions about where you are letting the world, even the Christian world, define you. Humbly allow others into your life to hear your answers. Find people who are farther along in this journey and ask about their experience in finding and living their true identity in God’s love.
Rediscovering Our Identity
Remember “Sarah” at the beginning of the chapter, the mother whose children left the faith and left her devastated? She has since spent years reevaluating her belief system and where she was putting her trust. Did she trust God with her children, or was she still trying to manipulate her kids to reach the outcome she believed was best? Whom was this truly about—her, her kids, or God? She has had to do a lot of work on her relationship with God through repentance and seeking truth in order to understand who he says she is.
As his child first and foremost, Sarah is able to be a light to her adult kids while keeping her fundamental identity separate from her kids’ decisions. She, as well as much of her Christian world, had defined her by tangible outcomes of her children’s faith, and thus she had felt like a failure as a parent, as a Christian. Now, her identity is firmly grounded in Christ, and that grounding gives her the peace to be firmly planted in Christ, where she can be an example to her kids but leave the outcome to God.
“Now, her identity is firmly grounded in Christ, and that grounding gives her the peace to be firmly planted in Christ.”
This didn’t happen overnight, and it wasn’t without putting in the work to rewire her thinking. Sarah studied God’s Word, specifically focusing on who God says she is. She made habits out of capturing her thoughts and changing the dynamics of the conversations she was having with her grown children. The conversations became about hearing their hearts and asking God to reveal to her what her responses should be, not how her flesh wanted to respond and correct things. She is a work in progress, and God is molding her into a woman who can love those who are causing her pain by their actions. She is perhaps the only person in their lives who is standing for the truth of Jesus.
Are you up for some rewiring? What you’ve just read is an excerpt from Identity: Who You Really Are in Christ by Anthony Walker and Michelle Eagle. Check out a free eBook here and the full book here.
