New Creation = New Identity

Unquestionably, you are a new creation! However, you are going to need some deep convincing and some thorough cleansing in order to cease relying on the pre-programmed ways of your old nature. Much progress will be made as you learn to understand and believe the reality of your new identity and the personality that comes along with it. Although it will take entrance into heaven to fully reveal what we will be like, we do know this: that when we see Jesus at last, we will discover that by the grace of God we will have become "like Him." How's that for a new identity and a new personality?

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 1 John 3:2

All scripture citations are from the English Standard Version (ESV) unless otherwise noted.

Our New Identity

The all-important issue of identity determines so much about how we will live and what we will do with our time here on earth. No one who has a poor self-image can truly enjoy living, yet the gospel has not come to tell you how great you are. Jesus says: “Without me you can do nothing,” and Paul writes, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells.”[1] That’s hardly a formula for pride based self-esteem!

So, what is the answer to our identity questions? Discovering who we really are—now that Jesus has come to live inside of us. And our sense of self-worth? It is based upon the solid rock of His love for us. Period. You are His beloved—just try to wrap your heart around the enormity of that blazing truth. He lived and died and lives again to bring you fully to life. Everything else you could hope to get out of life—compared to this—is chump change.[2]

Identity and the Lost Image

What could be of more practical value to us than discovering who we really are? There are two great questions that challenge every human being: Is there a God and who am I? Socrates, after his encounter with the oracle of Delphi, believed he was commissioned by God to teach wisdom to men. The foundation of his teaching? Know thyself.

Our fundamental problem is that we do not know who our God is; therefore, we do not know who we really are. We are suffering from a massive loss of identity made even worse by our failure to realize it and face up to it.

The fall from grace created our identity crisis. We tend to think mainly of the Fall as a fall into sin and into the sin nature, which it certainly was. We say rightly that fallen man, once created in the Image of God, no longer reflects that image. But one essential effect of the Fall was that, in dying spiritually, Adam could no longer behold his God. Both the Image of God and the image of man fell from his sight. Adam could neither see who God is nor could he see who he himself truly was, since who we are is entirely defined in relation to God who created us.

Jesus has come to restore both our lost vision (see Beholding the True Image and Our New Identity).

The “Old Identity” Can Still Trip Us Up

The old nature draws power from false ideas of self-shaped by the world. Some of us carry elements in our personality that we think of as ourselves. They are in us—but not us!

Nervous energy/anxious feelings
Perfectionism (people pleasing)
Addictions/compulsions
Drive to achieve (self-salvation)
Flashes of anger (hot temper)
Excessive sensitivity (easily hurt)
Timidity/shyness (fear of man)
Deep wellsprings of grief
Feelings of persistent loneliness
Depression, heaviness of heart
Nuclear reactivity/panic mode
Impatience (prickly, irritable)
Stubbornness (pride, rebellion)
Impulse to control/be in control

These ideas of self are not who we really are! Any or all of these may describe our personality as we have known it until now, but they are not our true God-given personhood. They reveal where the fallen nature still has power to block the life of the New Creation from coming forth, but they tell us nothing of what the Father created us to be before the enemy began “unmaking” us. If you need help gaining freedom in these areas, please take our eCourse for Emotional Healing. It’s free and it really works!

Two Telltale Truths about Our “Personalities”

1) In the womb these negative traits weren’t in us. Even as young children we trusted and loved freely—no baggage!

2) When we die and go to heaven, these traits will have to be removed from us. They are not God’s desire for us.

Restoration of our true life begins by breaking agreement with false beliefs about ourselves and choosing instead to embrace what God is speaking to us about our new identity. Two images fell when Adam fell—that of God and that of us. Get your image rightly set by seeing His. Whatever does not look like Jesus in you, isn’t the real you. Refuse to be deceived by your enemy about who you really are.

Learn how to Recognize and Replace! the grip of the old ways on you with the grace of the new. Never settle for anything less than “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”[3] Proper self-love is accepting God’s view of us — it is not pride, false humility, or self-absorption. Let’s get purified from all false ideas of ourselves.[4]

The Great Exchange

Apart from Christ we will be weak, foolish, sinful and ignorant in many ways, but in Christ we are complete, secure and sustained by His life. As Archbishop François Fénelon wrote, “Expect nothing of yourself, but all things of God. Knowledge of one’s own hopeless, incorrigible weakness combined with absolute confidence in God’s power are the two foundations of the spiritual life.”[5]

God is not asking us to perfect or change ourselves, but to turn to Him and learn to see and believe all of life from His perspective. Heaven’s perspective on our life is always liberating. Take a moment to “look through” to heaven with your eyes of faith and seek to catch a glimpse of who you are in your eternal being. This is the real you—the eternal you.

Then let the power of that glorious vision be released with “prophetic decree” into your own heart now. If you are in Christ, then read and confess with full faith your true new identity:

I am eternally the beloved bride of my Savior Jesus.
I am eternally a receiver of God’s love, mercy, wisdom, saving help and never-ending life.
I am only a sinner needing mercy for a short while on earth.
I am in Christ and He is in me—forever!
I am an eternal being with a spirit as free as the wind and a soul of dazzling beauty and grace.
I am indestructible in my being, due to His life in me.
I am worse in my fallen-ness and better in my new created-ness than I ever imagined.

The Way of Restoration

Joy is produced in us whenever we realize by an active faith who we really are in Him. Even so, the truly great joy is not who we are in Christ, but who He is to us!

1) Learn to recognize all false images of self that don’t match up with Jesus and which block your new life from coming forth.

2) Take full responsibility for your attachment to these false ideas of self: Repent, renounce and break all agreement with the enemy about who you are, confessing the truth instead.

3) Turn to the Father and release gratitude that who you are in Christ already looks a lot like Him—you are a New Creation!

Prayer

Father, as a New Creation I cannot define myself by anything less than who I now am in Christ without damaging my self-image, security, sense of worth and purpose. I will therefore accept no lesser definitions of who I am. Help me break all agreement with my former ways of seeing myself and trust completely in Your heavenly perspective!

Keep Growing!

The Power of Your Will  Apart from God, your will is the single most powerful thing in your universe. It has the power to choose heaven or hell as your ultimate destination and a heaven-infused life versus a hellish one down here. Like a fire hose under maximum pressure it can send you careening all over the place, unless you learn how to get a good grip on the thing and attach your will to His grace.

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