Acts 17:27-28 (NLT)
“His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”
We were made for another world and have lost our identity. But God has a secret . . . our identities can be found again.
Between 6,000 and 7,000 years ago a decision was made to leave perfection, to leave a God who loved us and to leave an identity in Him. As time went on, God’s people pursued idol after idol trying to fix the desperate need in their souls to find their identity again.
And today people are still on a search for this sense of completeness. Lost in a world with seemingly never-ending options, none of it fulfills us because our Designer made us for Himself, not for temporary things that perish. And the idols and fake identities we choose don’t satisfy. They are merely creations themselves from fallen man.
Two thousand years ago a baby was born, a God-man, to save our souls and restore what had been lost in the Garden. This baby came to give us an identity in Him that we forfeited when we opted for a fallen, broken identity instead.
Those who had ears to hear and eyes to see understood that they could not save themselves and that no identity and nothing in this world could. Still, many did not accept this free gift of salvation and continued the futile search for life in nonliving things, or in people, relationships, achievements, roles, positions to fill this ache in their souls.
And here we are today. Nothing new underneath the sun. Maybe a little more updated, but the struggle is the same. Man searches to be his own God, to find his identity apart from God, and yet he was made in the image of God.
We don’t recognize that the identity theft on the rise today that we bemoan is also happening to our souls. An identity theft that reaches further than our wallet, to our souls. That place where man tries to find that place of peace and fulfillment apart from His Creator.
Still, our Savior came and He is coming again. Will we see what He accomplished in the Nativity? What His birth did for us and how it relates to our identity?
The enemy of our souls is the author of confusion. If he can confuse our identity, we remain preoccupied with self and miss out on a relationship with God and His purposes for our life. Understanding our identity is important. We need to understand who and whose we are to live a fruitful life in Christ. Confusion happens when we don’t have a right understanding of our identity in Christ.
Identity confusion is even causing people to try and choose their identity. Some are confused about their gender, something that truly there is no confusion about. God made two genders. No in between, no confusion:
Genesis 1:27 ESV,
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
While others try to choose an identity from another race or another age. This is foolishness. God made us in His identity, in His image. We are children of God, if we have accepted His free gift:
John 1:12 (ESV)
“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
Made in His image, this image was broken because of the sins of Adam and Eve:
Genesis 5:1-3 (ESV)
“This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.”
But the birth of Christ restores what sin took away. Christ is the second Adam, sinless, who lived a sinless life so He could pay for our sins and then give us back our rightful identity as a child of God, once again.
1 Corinthians 15:22 (NLT)
“Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life.”
There, born as a babe was the God of this universe, coming in our identity as a human being – to give us His identity. When a human is born, we are born with a broken image. But when Christ was born, he was once again bearing the perfect image of God. Christ’s birth, God coming to earth, was to restore our identity in Christ and save our souls.
God can clear up any confusion for you today, friends. You are His beloved. You have value, worth and purpose as His child. Don’t fall for the lies like Adam and Eve did. God loves you so very much that He would come and be born as a human to reach you, then lay down His life for you. Lay down the fake identities and trust in Him! He is your Savior! You will find your identity in the Nativity, where Jesus Christ was born to restore our identity again in Him.
Know who you are and whose you are, friends. This month, I will be discussing this topic and how we can live out this identity in Christ. There are also daily Advent thoughts on the Seeing Deep Blog and the Seeing Deep podcast (This week’s: Finding Unfailing Hope in Christ) is featuring a celebration of Advent all month long, as we prepare our hearts to celebrate the birth of our Savior.
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