Identity in Christ

Written by Darren Hewer

“My identity is in someone else.” The phrase would seem incomprehensible to secular society. My identity is mine alone, we think; how dare anyone stake claim to it? Yet Christians believe it wholeheartedly: “My identity is in Christ.”

One of the difficulties of faith is that certain truths of God have no true analogue. The Trinity is a classic example: One God in three Persons. We can understand the concept, but what that truly means is ultimately a mystery. The reason is that we usually understand things by comparing them to other things: A word processor is like a sophisticated typewriter.

But as soon as you say “The Trinity is like …” you’re headed for dangerous territory, because ultimately the Trinity is God, and unlike anything else. “The Trinity is like water: ice, liquid, steam.” That’s modalism (the heresy that suggests that God is the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit but only one at a time) since water cannot be simultaneously ice, liquid and steam at once.

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Likewise, what it means to have our “identity in Christ” can be confounding to the inquisitive mind, because there are no good analogues around to refer to. Any illustration we give will necessarily be insufficient.

However, we don’t need complete understanding in order to begin living out our identity in Christ today. Surely our understanding will deepen as we live out this new identity in Christ. Jon Walker’s devotional “Identity in Christ” is a good place to start.

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