“Be true to yourself.” “Be creative, be unique, be you.” “True love will love me for who I really am.” These and countless other platitudes have become so normal in twenty-first-century America that we seldom question the worldview behind them and seldom understand why that worldview is so dangerous and deadly to our lives as Christians. They all seek to answer the question of identity: Who am I really? And yet they fail to give a meaningful answer to the question. So, let’s take a look at identity from a Christian perspective. Who are we? And why does it matter?

     

The Problem

The world’s problem with identity has become glaringly obvious in the last decade. First, we are told to be true to ourselves, but then, who is our real self ? Perhaps our real self was the one years ago, when we were younger, stronger, smarter, wealthier, skinnier. Perhaps our real self is not what it seems—maybe we are trapped in an occupation, marriage, or gender where we don’t really belong. The world thinks that we get to create our own happiness. We have certain things that we need to survive, and the idea is that we become happier—and we become more our real selves—as we fulfill different needs. For example, we need love and relationships, so we can become happier by adding marriage and children to our list of accomplishments. The non- Christian thinks that he writes his own story. He can add in romantic love and become more fulfilled and happy. So, if that romantic love turns out to be someone who criticizes him and exposes his faults, then the obvious thing to do is to get a divorce, because that person is not loving him for who he really is. And, since he is the author of his own story, no one gets to tell him that he is wrong.

Wrong Answers

How would you answer the question, “Who are you?” There are many ways to approach the answer, yet many of them fall short in some way. Perhaps you would describe yourself by listing your accomplishments. “I worked for this company for twenty years and have risen to the level of senior vice president.” Yet your achievements fail to show your core character. Perhaps you would describe yourself using your feelings and passions. “I love football” or “I am a devoted husband and father.” Yet your feelings are fickle and could quickly change. Maybe you loved football when you were young and now you do not care much for it. Maybe your spouse has died, or your relationship with your children has become strained.1

What the Bible Says

What does the Bible tell us about who we are as believers? “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17, New King James Version). Going back a few verses, we find the context behind the “therefore”: “If One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14–15). Who are you? First, you’re dead. Somehow, I doubt that was the first thing that came to mind! Second, this passage tells us that we are a new creation. What does it mean to be a new creation? “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). A new creation means that we are to become the righteousness of God. But what do all these statements have to do with who we really are? Surely we can’t just sit on the couch all day and say, “I am becoming the righteousness of God.”

Be Who You Already Are

My former pastor likes to say, “Be who you already are.” What he is saying is this: in Christ, we are dead to our old sins, our old patterns of life, our frustrations, and our worries. In Christ, we are made new; we are cleansed from our old sins. And, because we are united to him by faith, we are perfect! We are clean and righteous in God’s sight. We are already—and yet still becoming—the righteousness of God. How does this happen? Rankin Wilbourne provides a helpful analogy from football. Suppose you are the littlest player on the team. You can run fast, and the opposing team has a hard time tackling you, because they can barely see you. However, in order to get the ball to the opposite end of the field, you need someone to blaze the way. You need a tall, solid guy in front of you as a blocker. This guy will run ahead of you, obscuring you and making a way for you with his powerful work. Everything that was supposed to hit you will instead hit him. He makes a way to glory for you, for you are hidden in him. So it is with Christ. He blazed the way; he obeyed God perfectly; he suffered faithfully; he died and rose again. By being hidden in him, you partake in this glory. You still have a job to do; you have to hold the ball, and run, and make the goal. But you can do this job only by being hidden in him.2

Never a Meaningless Existence

Because we are in Christ, our identities are wrapped up in him. Our existence is never meaningless. Rachel Jankovic puts it this way in Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It:

Your small victories declare His [Christ’s] great ones— your victory over fussiness at your children connects to His victory over death. Your death, when it comes, will only be the beginning of eternal life. Your death could come in your prime, before your prime, and you would be no less you in Christ. Your story would be no smaller, your value unaffected. You could die in your infancy and be no less important. You will still live eternally in Christ and need have no fear of the grave.3

Perhaps you’re not sure who you are, especially in a certain area. What if you have a job you don’t really love, one that doesn’t use your gifts and talents fully? Are you somehow missing out on the real you? No. You are still both dead to sin and alive to Christ. You can still take the little steps of obedience every day, becoming more like Christ. You can still be the best employee you can be. This commitment to everyday obedience isn’t to say that you can’t or shouldn’t look for something different, but you have not somehow missed out on God’s plan for your life.

Making and Keeping Promises

As we become more like God, we show forth his image more and more—in fact, this is what we were created to do. “Who are we? [Lewis] Smedes answers that we are largely who we become through making wise promises and keeping them.”4 This answer should not surprise us, because this faithfulness is a large part of who God is. He made a wise and loving promise at the beginning of the world: to send his own Son to die for the sins of his people. Through keeping that promise, God showed himself to be really and truly God, really and truly himself, as he chose to love his own to the end. As we make and keep wise promises, we reflect God’s character and become more and more the faithful and loving people we were created to be.

A Better Story

If you think of your life as a story, are there parts that you wish had been written better? There certainly are in mine. The difficulties of my first year of marriage and move away from home were not in my plan. In fact, I thought I had planned things out pretty well in order to avoid that particular trial. When faced with such challenges, we can respond in several different ways: 1. We can be angry that our planning and efforts and work didn’t pay off the way we wanted. 2. We can run a continuous cycle of thoughts, going over and over the problem and trying to figure out why it didn’t work out the way we planned. This process usually looks like a lot of “if only” statements and rehashing the same conversations over and over.3 We can feel envy and regret whenever someone else got the thing that we wanted. 4. We can trust that God is the author of our story and that he has ordained this particular trial for his glory and our good. We may have to say, “Well, that particular thing didn’t turn out the way I wanted, but I was faithful in the little things, and I trust that God ordained that trial for my good.” We have to do what Jankovic calls “planting flags” of everyday faithfulness. “Maybe the territory you really need to plant a flag on is your past. Maybe grievous sins hang over you, and what you need most is to look at them and say, ‘All this belongs to King Jesus and is forgiven for His glory and my good. May He use it in His kingdom, may His name be praised, and may I grow ever more like Him.’”⁵

Next time you hear the words, “Be true to yourself,” think about how your real self is a new creation, created for good works and intended to reflect and glorify God in all that you do. Rejoice in the greatness of a God who chose you from before the foundation of the world, in order that you should be holy and blameless before him in love. Live out each day in that knowledge and rejoice in your Savior who will one day take you home to be with him in heaven. Your life is hidden with Christ in God. Now, go be who you really are.

1. Lewis Smedes, “Controlling the Unpredictable: The Power of Promising,” Christianity Today (January 21, 1983), referenced by Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage (New York: Penguin, 2011), 95. 2. Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2016), 41. 3. Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2019), 90–91. 4. Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, 95. 5. Jankovic, You Who?, 92.

Vanessa Le is a wife and mom to four children age six and under. She enjoys reading, playing the piano, studying theology, and generally being Mommy. She is a member of Orlando Reformed Presbyterian Church in Orlando, FL.