Identity Is Critical

In today’s world we are taught that what we do determines who we are. If you tell a lie, you are a liar. If you steal something, you are a thief. But the Bible teaches something different. According to the Bible, who we are determines what we do! Who our father is, the life that we have in us, our nature, determines our identity, which produces our behavior.

I can hear you now saying, “What is he talking about? Is he saying we don’t have the freedom to make choices? We have no options on our behavior?”

Bear with me as I explain.

They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham~ children, you would do the works of Abraham” (John 8:39). The religious Jews thought that Abraham was their father, and thus their perceived identity was as children of Abraham. Jesus, however, makes it clear that our true identity comes from a lineage that began way before Abraham. He told the “sons of Abraham,” You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will [want to] do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and did not abide in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own [resources], for he is a liar and the father of it” (John 8:44).

Listen closely. If you are a person who WANTS to lie, it is because it is your nature to lie, which you received from your father, Satan. Telling the lie does not make you a liar. Being a liar by nature makes you WANT to lie. “You do the deeds of your father” (John 8:41).

A key to understanding the Christian life is knowing that since Christ is now our life within us, God is our Father. Therefore we have His nature and WANT to do His works because Christ is our identity.

THE BORN AGAIN BELIEVER DOES NOT WANT TO LIE FOR IT IS NOT HIS NATURE. Because Christ now lives in us, as us, and through us (Galatians 2:20), it is not we who WANT to sin. Paul explained, “Now if I do that which I don’t WANT to do, it is no more I that do it, but sin working in me” (Romans 7:20).

Do you get it? Unbelievers — those before a new birth in union with Christ — lie, steal, or sin in general because it is their nature and they WANT to do it.

Believers — those born again in Christ — still can lie, steal, or sin in general, but because of their new nature in God, they don’t really WANT to do it.

It is critical that we Christians determine our identity by the source of our life, and not by the deeds that we sometimes do. Doing wrong does not make you a sinner any more that doing right makes you a saint.

All that is required for salvation and new birth is belief. Christians are corrected by God (not punished because Christ received our punishment on the Cross). Certainly we still sin at times. BUT IT IS NOT BECAUSE WE WANT TO. Our new nature does not permit us to WANT to. When we slip and sin, we really don’t WANT to, but our human weakness succumbs to temptation. Our divine Father understands and uses the circumstance and all of its fallout to draw us closer to dependence on God’s strength through Christ and not our own.

What about choice and responsibility? Man is not a robot with no free expression of himself as a person. It is precisely the opposite. It is no paradox when freedom must make its choices and the free will then loves to be controlled by its choice. We still do what we WANT to do. There is no need to force a person’s will. All the deity within need do is to attract and captivate our “want”, and then we will love to act in harmony with him. People often ask, How can we conceive of God changing a person’s will if he is free? The answer is: GOD CHANGES OUR “WANT”, AND THE HUMAN WILL GROWS TO FOLLOW. Once God has captured our “wants” by drawing us back to Himself through Christ, then it is He in us who “wills and does of His good pleasure” (and it is always good!), and it is we who naturally, gladly freely work it out because we WANT to (Phil. 2:13-14).

It is because many Christian children of God still look back and see their pre-conversion days as simply themselves influenced by Satan, and doing their evil deeds, that much of the difficulty of the Christian life comes. When it is recognized that they were actually children of the devil and he was living his own lifestyle through them — he being the real sinner by nature — it is only then that true growth in the lifestyle of God can take place.

We are not battling two natures within us. In fact the container self does not HAVE a nature. God is instilling in our union with Him the WANTS of His NATURE. Christ will never leave us or forsake the process of directing our
WANTS.

Yes, identity is the key to life. All human beings are vessels containing a nature — the nature of Satan before becoming a believer in Jesus Christ, and the nature of God after a new birth in union with Christ. God’s salvation for us is receiving a new identity, a new nature in union with Christ. IDENTITY IS CRITICAL.

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