Engaging Scripture

Does where you were born matter? – Our Identity: Citizens of God’s Kingdom, Part 1

Where were you born? I’ve lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for most of my life, but I was born in Alexandria, Virginia. What that means is that I am a citizen of the United States of America. What country are you a citizen of?

I’m bringing this up because in our Identity sermon series, we’ve talked about how Christians are adopted children of God, with new life in Christ, and temples of the Holy Spirit. But how do we live out this identity in the world?

The earliest Christians taught the principle that we live out our identity in the world as Citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. In our church fellowship hall, we fly flags from various countries that we are associated with, but we hang the Christian flag in the center. We wanted the the Christian flag to be the focal point because while we represent earthly nations, we are truly citizens of God’s Kingdom, not of any one earthly country. As with any claim like that, we need to ask, “Does the Bible talk about this?”

Let’s examine what the biblical writers had to say, starting with what Paul taught in Philippians 3:18-21,

“For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”

Paul taught something similar in Ephesians 2:11-22. I encourage you to read it, and because it is a longer passage, I will summarize it. Paul says that in God’s Kingdom we have a new identity, a new home, a new people, a new citizenship. We are no longer foreigners and aliens in the world, but we are fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household. So we belong somewhere. This is great news!

Keep your finger in Ephesians 2, and turn to 1 Peter 1:17. In 1 Peter 1:17, Peter teaches the Christians to, “live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.” Then he repeats himself in 1 Peter 2:11 when he says, “Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires which war against your soul.” Do you hear that? We Christians have a new identity. We see ourselves not as citizens of an earthly nation, but as aliens and strangers here, because we have a new citizenship in God’s Kingdom.

At first glance this could sound like a contradiction of what Paul said in Ephesians 2:19. Compare the two. In Ephesians 2:19, Paul says, “You are no longer foreigners and aliens,” and in 1 Peter 1 and 2 we just read Peter say that we should live as aliens and strangers. They’re talking about the same thing, but from different directions. We are not aliens because our true citizenship is in God’s Kingdom, and so therefore we should see not see our national birthplace as our true identity. When we make the choice to follow Jesus, we are granted citizenship in his kingdom, and that identity trumps all other citizenship.

Think about your various forms of ID. We get our first one when we are born: a birth certificate. As I said earlier, I was born in Virginia. Then we get our Social Security number. And eventually our driver’s license. And a voter card. And a passport. And maybe you have other ID too. Believe it or not, I have a pastor’s ID card. I also have a clergy ID from our local hospital. These IDs relate to our various associations, but only a couple of them relate to our citizenship. Our birth certificates and our passports. In my case, they are official forms of ID authenticating my citizenship in the United States of America. There’s been a lot of talk about the new REAL ID, which is basically a driver’s license with the yellow star symbol. But ironically, for Christians REAL ID is not our real ID.

Christians, we have a new identity. We are not only children of God, adopted into his family, alive in Christ, temples of the Holy Spirit, we are also citizens of the Kingdom of God, and that means we are strangers and aliens in this earthly realm.

My citizenship in God’s Kingdom, of course, does not eliminate my American citizenship. Christians are dual citizens. But our citizenship in God Kingdom is far superior to our earthly citizenship. In fact, what Peter is teaching is that our citizenship in God’s Kingdom is much more real and important, and that our earthly citizenship pales in comparison to the point where we see ourselves as strangers and aliens on earth. Our earthly nation is not our true home. Our citizenship to an earthly country is far inferior to our citizenship in God’s Kingdom. This has great ramifications for how we view the world and make decisions. We should filter everything through our citizenship in the Kingdom of God.

The writer of Hebrews suggested something similar in Hebrews 11:13, talking about some of the so-called heroes of faith. The writer says that those people, “admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth,” and that “they were longing for a better country–a heavenly one.” Just a few chapters leater in Hebrews 13:14 he says, “For we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”

We know that one day in the future in heaven, as we read in Revelation 7:9, that all Christians from every tribe, tongue and nation will be together. There will no longer be earthly nations, but all will be together in God’s Kingdom.

What that means is that our earthly citizenship is temporary. You might have seen the Tom Hanks movie The Terminal. The official summary of the premise of the movie says, “When Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), an Eastern European tourist, arrives at JFK in New York, war breaks out in his country. Because of the war, the US Department of Homeland Security won’t let him enter or exit the United States. He’s trapped at JFK indefinitely.” Because of the war in his country, it wasn’t certain what his country was anymore. In effect he was a citizen of no earthly country. That could happen to anyone, right? I’m writing as an American citizen. Before 1776 the United States of America did not exist. There could be a time in the future when it will no longer exist. Furthermore, when we die, our earthly citizenship ceases to have any importance. But our citizenship in heaven is permanent, eternal.

Let us not make a mistake, though, of thinking that our citizenship in God’s Kingdom is only in the future. We are citizens of the Kingdom of God now.

What does that mean? How does our citizenship in God’s Kingdom matter now? In the next post, we’ll try to begin to answer that question.

How to walk with the Holy Spirit every day – Our Identity: Temples of the Spirit, Part 5

If you are a Christian, you carry the Holy Spirit around with you everywhere you go. So what? What does that matter? How do we live out our identity as temples of the Spirit?

It starts with confession and repentance for the sin in our lives. Admit it, and turn away from it. One of those of particular importance, when it comes to the Spirit, is an apathy toward the Spirit. Imagine how that must feel to the Spirit. Here he is, God, coming to live with us, to indwell us, which is an amazing gift of himself to us, and we can be very apathetic to him, often treating him as if he doesn’t exist. And yet he is with us! Imagine how your spouse or child or parent would feel if you spent most of every day ignoring them, though you are living together in the same house. It would feel incredibly offensive to them. Likewise imagine how the Holy Spirit feels if we rarely talk with or listen to him, though he is indwelling us?

Many people go through the act of being married. They have a ring on their finger, a signed marriage license, but that does not mean they have a healthy, thriving, loving marriage. To achieve that you need to invest in listening, spending time together, growing in communication, prioritizing the other. You are still married if you don’t have a loving healthy marriage, but it is not, and you are not, all that you can be and all that your marriage is meant to be and intended to be.

In the first post in this series, we looked at John 16 where Jesus said that he was leaving the disciples, but that was a good thing for them. He was giving the disciples something better, and what he said is true. Because having the Holy Spirit indwelling us and filling us is so good, then we should desire a close relationship with the Spirit to be a regular part of our heart, mind, and life.

To that, I want to talk about how we address the Spirit. I did it right there. I wrote, “THE Spirit.” On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with that. The biblical writers and Jesus himself addressed the Spirit that way. It is proper English. The Spirit does not have a given name, but instead a title. Kind of like “God THE Father,” and “God THE Son,” but when it comes to Jesus, we can feel more personal with him because he does have a given name. Jesus. So we never say, “THE Jesus” because he is Jesus. We call him by his first name, as is totally normal, and yet the byproduct is that we can feel closer to him. Likewise, we can feel more distant from the Spirit because of how we address him. But as we’ve seen in this week’s posts, the Spirit is actually closer to us than Jesus. The Spirit is living with us.

So I am going to make a suggestion. What if we start addressing the Spirit directly, as if that is his name? For example, and this might sound odd at first, but how about this conversation starter, “Spirit, how are you doing this morning?” Notice how it is more personal? More relational?

We sing songs like this, don’t we? “Spirit of the Living God, fall fresh on me.” “Holy Spirit, you are welcome here.” We don’t sing those songs, saying “The Holy Spirit, you are welcome here,” because we are addressing the Spirit directly. You can do the same as you pray to the Spirit, in order to help develop a closer relationship with the Spirit. Make it personal. Maybe we need to start with confessing and repenting of a neglect of the Spirit.

Next, be filled, ingest the Spirit into your life, but not just alone. Do it together with people. We so often think of this individually, or done in isolation, as if that is all that Paul intended. For the early Christians, Spirit-filled life was a group thing. When the Spirit first indwelled them, as we read in Acts 2, that group of disciples and followers of Jesus were praying together. Of course the Spirit can work individually, but it also very important to see the filling of the Spirit in a group.

How do we do this? Certainly by spending in time in prayer, talking with and listening to the Spirit. Include Scripture in these conversations. Read it, asking the Spirit to help you understand it, and listen for what he is saying to you through.

In a recent conversation with a friend, they told me that in their teen years they decided to read the Bible cover to cover. They were committed to it, but all that reading did nothing, they said. I appreciate the honesty of that. Maybe you’ve felt the same way. Just deciding to read the Bible isn’t a guarantee of growing closer to God. So I recommend that you connect with someone. Get someone to teach you how to read the Bible, and do it along with you. Remember when we talked about ways we can quench the Spirit? One of the ways is by looking at scripture intellectually and not as in relationship with God. How are you reading scripture? Read Scripture, asking the Holy Spirit within you to help you understand what God is saying to you through his Word. Include time for listening to the Spirit speak, through Scripture, through others, and for those mysterious impressions we call the voice of the Spirit. Throughout this Identity series, I’ve been advocating reading one chapter every day for a week, and then getting together with others and discussing it. Have a Spirit-filled, Spirit-led, spiritual discussion. If you believe the Spirit is talking with you, don’t keep it to yourself, but bring it to the group for confirmation.

You are children of God, alive in Christ, temples of the Holy Spirit. So live out of that identity. Serving, Giving, Sacrificing. Walking into situations with the personal knowledge and understanding that you are carrying Holy Spirit with you. In conclusion, just as Paul taught us in Galatians 5, walk in step with the Spirit, and you will see the fruit of the Spirit flowing from your life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness and self-control.

How to be filled with (and quench) the Holy Spirit – Our Identity: Temples of the Spirit, Part 4

Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? Is it possible that you might have grieved or quenched the Spirit?

We learned in the previous post that the Spirit of God is hard at work in lives. But what if we don’t know it, or realize it, or feel it? That would be a bummer, right? The God of the universe is living in us, at work in us, and yet sometimes we can barely realize it. That’s a problem. What we see in Scripture is that just because we are indwelt with the Spirit at the moment of placing our faith in Christ, that doesn’t mean we are filled with the Spirit. There is a difference between being indwelt and filled.

What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit?

Does it mean we will demonstrate some special powers? Some people say that if you really have the Spirit in your life, you will know it because you will be speaking in tongues, or you will be slain in the Spirit, or you will be able to do miracles, or you will be able to hear messages from God that he wants you to deliver to other people. Should we expect this to be standard or normal in the life of the believer in the church?

If you go back to the time when the Spirit first came to the church in Acts 2, that is definitely what it meant. In a previous post this week we read verses 1-4, but take a look again at verse 4. After the Spirit filled the disciples, they were speaking in other languages. The implication of the text is that the disciples did not previously know those languages. The Spirit of God was empowering them to preach the Good News of Jesus in the home languages of the people who were gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish celebration of Pentecost. The first time the Spirit gave people the gift of speaking in tongues, those people were speaking real languages for the purposes of introducing people to Jesus. Later in the letter Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, some 30 years later, he talks about speaking in tongues a bit differently. I’m not going to take the time to do a deep study of 1^st Corinthians 14, but essentially he says that there is an angelic tongue of sorts, and people, by the Holy Spirit, are gifted to speak that language, which can sound like ecstatic speech. He also says that not every Christian will speak it or understand it, so there will also be people who are gifted to translate the language to the rest so they can understand. Furthermore he says that we shouldn’t forbid speaking in that kind of tongue, but he believes that kind of speaking in tongues is far inferior to speaking in a language that everyone can understand.

The problem is when there is a requirement for these kinds of manifestations of the Spirit to prove that you are a true Christian. Some Christians say that unless you speak in that angelic tongue, you are not truly a Christian. There is nothing in Scripture, in my reading, that would substantiate that claim. Instead you can be indwelt with the Spirit and filled with the Spirit, and you might never speak in tongues, or do miracles. What, then, does it mean to be filled with the Spirit?

In Ephesians 5:15-21, Paul gives a fairly clear teaching about being filled with the Spirit.

He uses alcohol to illustrate being filled with the Spirit. As Paul indicates, when you consume alcohol, it gets in your bloodstream and starts to debilitate you. You lose your faculties. That is what inebriated means. You are intoxicated. You are no longer in control of your life. This is why the Scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments issue strong warnings about the consumption of alcohol, and both are clear in their condemnation of drunkenness. Paul takes that image and says, do not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. Interestingly, alcohol is called spirits. Paul is saying don’t allow alcoholic spirits to control you, but allow The Holy Spirit to control you. That is the difference between indwelling and filling. For some of us, the Spirit is living in us, he is indwelling us, but he is not in control of our lives. When he fills us, we are giving him control.

So when you make the choice to give your life to Christ and follow his heart, he gives you his Spirit to indwell you. But for the rest of your life you have a choice about filling, about who is controlling your thoughts, your actions and your heart.

Paul says that though we are temples of the Holy Spirit, we are not always walking with the Spirit. We read this in Galatians 5. When we allow sin to flow from our lives, Paul writes, we are not walking in step with the Spirit. In Ephesians 4:30, he says that we can grieve Spirit. And in 1 Thessalonians 5:19 he teaches that we can quench the Spirit, or put out the Spirit’s fire.

We don’t use the word “quench” all that much, so what does it mean? Most commonly we use it as “quench your thirst”. It is to satisfy or to put out. When it comes to a forest fire or thirst, you certainly want to quench it. But not the Spirit. My NIV Study Bible notes make a very interesting comment about this idea of quenching the Spirit.

“There is a warmth, a glow, about the Spirit’s presence that makes this language appropriate. The kind of conduct Paul is opposing may include loafing, immorality and the other sins he has denounced. On the other hand, he may be warning against a mechanical attitude toward worship that discourages the expression of the gifts of the Spirit in the local assembly.”
Leon Morris

In other words, if we choose to live sinful lives, we can quench or grieve the Spirit, meaning that we are less filled with the Spirit, and we are not giving him control of our hearts, actions, and words. But it is also very possible that if we take a mechanical or intellectual, rather than a personal or relational view of the Spirit, that too can quench the Spirit. You can study a driving book, learn all the ways of the road, maybe even pass the test and get your license, but that does not mean that you are a driver. Becoming a driver takes getting a car, putting the keys in the ignition, starting the engine, then driving it onto the road, and navigating it around other vehicles. Just knowing about something does not mean it affects your day to day thoughts and movements. Knowledge is not the same as real interaction.

Check back in to the final post in this week’s series on our identity as temples of the Holy Spirit as we seek to answer the question of how that identity matters in the real world of our day-to-day lives.

How the Holy Spirit works in us – Our Identity: Temples of the Spirit, Part 3

Your body is a temple.

Have you ever heard that? What does it mean? If you google it, you’ll find lots of images of people exercising. When people say, “your body is a temple,” they are often referring to health and wellness. So to treat your body right, you should exercise, eat healthy, and sleep well. They are not wrong in saying that. We absolutely should care for our bodies.

But the idea that our bodies are temples is an old one, and it’s ancient meaning is very different from how it is commonly used today. As we continue this third week of our Identity series, you might have noticed that the previous two posts this week have the subtitle: “Temple of the Holy Spirit.” That is the ancient meaning, that humans who are true followers of Jesus, in their bodies, are temples of God’s Spirit. In the previous two weeks in our Identity series, we’ve seen how our identity must be rooted in the truth that we are children of God, adopted into his family, and how we are made new, alive in Christ. So after seeing our identity in the first two persons of the Trinity, this week we are looking at our identity in the Spirit. In 1st Corinthians chapter 6, verses 12-20, Paul teaches the amazing truth that the Spirit of God lives in us, and thus our bodies are his temple.

Paul’s image hearkens back to the Old Testament, where in 2 Chronicles 7:1-3 we read that Solomon dedicated the temple and the glory of God filled the temple. Paul takes this image and appropriates it for us. No longer does God dwell in a building, but we are temples that carry the Spirit of God with us.

What do we do, though, if we don’t feel like temples of the Spirit? How many of us feel very little or nothing of the Holy Spirit in our lives day to day?

We need to trust that the Spirit is at work in you, and we need to pursue the filling of the Spirit, which we’ll talk more about in the next post. For the remainder of this post, we’ll look at some ways the Bible tells us that the Spirit works in us, even if we don’t feel like anything is happening.

First, the Spirit illuminates, or shines light. How? In John 16:13-16, we read that He illuminates truth and brings glory to Christ, like sports stadium lights illuminate the field. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:12, “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.”

Second, the Spirit convicts of sin. Jesus said in John 16:8, “When he comes, the Spirit will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment”

Third, the Spirit also helps us in prayer. In Romans 8:26-27, Paul writes, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.”

These are just three of the many ways the Spirit is of God is hard at work in our lives. But what if we don’t know it, or realize it, or feel it? That would be a bummer, right? The God of the universe is living in us, at work in us, and yet sometimes we can barely realize it. That’s a problem. What we see in Scripture is that just because we are indwelt with the Spirit at the moment of placing our faith in Christ, that doesn’t mean we are filled with the Spirit. There is a difference between being indwelt and filled.

Check back in to the next post as we’ll look at what the New Testament writers had to say about the filling of the Spirit.

What is the Holy Spirit? And how do we receive the Spirit? – Our Identity: Temples of the Spirit, Part 2

What is the Holy Spirit?

As a spirit, you cannot see the Spirit. The Spirit is invisible. But the Spirit is God, God’s true spiritual being. The Spirit is equal to God in every way.

In Scripture we see various descriptions of the Spirit. The Spirit came like a dove alighting on Jesus during his baptism. That doesn’t mean the Spirit has the actual physical form of a dove. The Gospel writers were simply trying to put into human words and ideas a concept that was ultimately beyond complete understanding.

In Acts 2, we read that the Spirit arrived, just as Jesus promised. I encourage you to open a Bible and read Acts 2:1-4. It’s wild.

Did you read the two ideas used to describe the coming of the Spirit? Wind and fire. In both cases, just like the dove at Jesus’ baptism, the writer does not say that the Spirit is wind or the Spirit is fire, but that the Spirit is like those things. You can see the writer grasping for words to describe something that was not fully possible to describe. A “sound like the blowing of a violent wind.” And then “what seemed to be tongues of fire.” I love reading this account, but what I really wish is that I could have been there to experience it! The writer is doing his best to help us have a semblance of an idea of what must have been mind-blowing. It reminds me of a few years ago when there was an earthquake. We were living in the city of Lancaster at the time, and I remember the sound and shaking. We lived only a block from the hospital, and I thought an emergency helicopter which would normally land on the hospital roof, must be landing on our roof. In those times when something new and unexpected is happening, we do our best to describe it, but we can’t quite fully understand it or articulate. When it comes to the Holy Spirit, therefore, we have a dove, we have wind, we have fire.

One other element to add to this is that in both the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament, the word for “spirit” is the same word that is used for wind or breath. The movement of air.

What all these images and words tell us is that the Spirit, though a spirit, though invisible, is quite real and powerful. In the busyness of our lives, we can forget that. As we studied in Part 1, Jesus said that it was good that he left so the Spirit would come. That means we have can have access to the very real, very powerful God the Spirit. But how do we have that access?

How and when does the Spirit come upon the life of the believer?

The simplest answer is that we receive the Spirit when we accept Christ as our Savior. But you might think, “Yeah, but I never had a moment where there was a sound like a rushing wind, or a tongues of fire, or a dove…none of that…do I have the Holy Spirit? Am I truly a Christian? Am I saved?”

The Bible teaches something called the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

In the Old Testament the Spirit only came on people for special purposes. It was not the norm. We heard about this when we studied Samson a few months ago in the Characters series. The Spirit came on him, empowering him to fight in battle, but it didn’t last.

In the New Testament, Jesus promised that his Spirit would come on his disciples in a much more complete way. For example, in John 14:16 he says that if the disciples obey what he commands, he will give us the Spirit to be with us forever. This is the indwelling of the Spirit. Indwelling means that the Spirit comes and lives with us.

Here are some other passages that talk about this:

1 Corinthians 12:13 “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.”

Ephesians 1:13 “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.”

2 Corinthians 1:21-22 “Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”

This is why Paul could say in Romans 8:9, “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.”

So how will we know if the Spirit is in our life? Will we feel something? Or is it just something that we must believe, even if we have no evidence of it happening?

Paul went on to answer that. Romans 8:15-16 “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”

There is no doubt that what Paul says here is mysterious and requires faith and trust, but what Paul indicates is that the Holy Spirit communicates a confirmation to us that he has indwelt us, and thus we can embrace our identity as children of God. I wish I could scientifically describe the indwelling of the Spirit for you, so that it was obvious and unmistakable, but God prefers us to place our faith in him rather than in undeniable evidence. But there is more we can point to.

You can also know that the Spirit is with you because you will see the fruit of the Spirit coming out of your lives. Turn to and read Galatians 5:16-26, which is where Paul teaches about the fruit of the Spirit.

One person from Faith Church told the story about how she rededicated her life to Jesus, and as a result she saw things differently, and she thought differently. Things she never thought about as sinful she now thought of as sinful. She had repented, and she was changed. She saw the evidence of the Holy Spirit flowing from her. For the rest of us, the same is true. We’ll know we have the Spirit in our lives when we start thinking differently.

She said, “Everything was a different color, everything was brighter.” I love that!

So when we place our faith in Jesus, and give our lives to follow him, he promises that God’s Spirit indwells us, seeking to transform us.

Because God lives in us, Paul says we are temples of the God’s Spirit. Temples? More on that in our next post.

Why it is good that Jesus left – Our Identity: Temples of the Spirit, Part 1

Our Identity: Temples of the Spirit, Part 1

Which of the three persons of the Trinity do you identify most with? God the Father, Jesus (who is God the Son), or the Spirit of God?

My guess is that for many (most?) the Spirit is in third place. Why? Because God the father is God. As our heavenly father, many feel close to him. Then there is Jesus who we can read about and feel close to because we know so many of his stories. Jesus becomes present to us, not to mention the fact that he is human like us.

But the Spirit? I have heard some say “How are we to feel close to what can seem like an invisible, silent, mysterious, spirit?” It can seem impossible to have a relationship with the Holy Spirit, or to identify with the Spirit.

And yet, the three persons of the Trinity are equally important. Though they are equal, Jesus once said something very surprising about the Spirit in John 16. In John chapters 13-17, Jesus is spending a final few hours with his disciples before he is arrested and taken away from them, and eventually crucified. So he is giving them some last minute teaching to help carry them through what will be an awful time for him and for them. What he says in numerous places in John chapters 13-17 is that he about to leave them. You can read how he prepares them for this momentous event that is about to happen. Then we come to John 16:7 where Jesus tells his disciples not only the alarming news that he is about to leave them, but also that it is good for them that he is leaving them.

Many of us read that and think, “Really, Jesus? It is for our good that you left and the Spirit comes?” How many of us would rather have Jesus? There’s even a song about it. “I’d rather have Jesus than anything…” Why? Jesus was so amazing. If I were the disciples hearing this, I’d be thinking about all his miracles, all his amazing teaching, and how incredible it was to be his friend. There is no doubt that he was an astounding person. It seems to me like Jesus is wrong here, that it would be obviously better for Jesus to stay.

Yet Jesus himself said it was for our good that he would leave, and that the Spirit would come be with us. If Jesus said it, then it is absolutely better, and it is for our best. He never lies, so he is telling the truth that it will be good that he leaves. Even if we don’t understand, or even if we disagree, it is good for us that he leaves them. Remember that Jesus has a perspective that we don’t have. Imagine being Jesus’ disciples hearing him say that it is good for him to leave them. How must they have felt? As they think about him leaving, they are likely very self-focused, thinking about how great it is for Jesus to be physically present with them. Maybe they are also thinking about some larger goals, such as the restoration of Israel. It could be that they think that Jesus is the political Messiah who will rise up and fight their Roman occupiers, defeat the Romans, and free Israel. If he leaves, they’ll be stuck under the Romans’ thumb. Maybe they are not thinking just about themselves, but about the freedom of their whole nation. So maybe the disciples’ concern is not altogether selfish. No matter what they were thinking, it must have been shocking or at least disappointing when Jesus says it is good that he leaves them. But how is it good?

It is good because unless Jesus goes the Spirit will not come. So whatever the Spirit is, whatever the Spirit does, it is good that Jesus leaves and the Spirit comes. It is good compared to Jesus himself being physically present in human form on the earth, because then the Spirit will come!

What that means for us is that it is quite important for us to identify with the Spirit and have a close relationship with him.

So what is the Holy Spirit? If we are to have a growing relationship with the Spirit, it is important first to learn who or what he or it is. Check back in to our next post as we’ll seek to find out.

How to identify with Jesus – Our Identity: In Christ, Part 5

How do we fully identify with Jesus?

It can be hard to know what this means.

It must go back to what Jesus himself taught in John 15. This is the parable of the vine and the branches, and in it Jesus teaches what is perhaps his most important teaching about our identity. Turn there and read John 15:1-10.

Did you catch Jesus’ central theme? Remain in him. Apart from him, you can do nothing. It is not only that we need to acknowledge our identity in him, but also that he wants us to depend on him. The result is his power flowing through us.

We recently had to cut down one of the English walnut trees in our back yard. Those trees made delicious walnuts for years. My daughter didn’t have a lemonade stand, but she did have a little walnut business. But this year the tree made no leaves and no walnuts. Branches had been falling down for years. This season the tree died.

Likewise, in order to avoid becoming spiritually dead and unfruitful, we must have union with Christ.

How then do we remain in him?

Jesus said in John 14:9, “Anyone who has seen me, has seen the father.” Thus Jesus provides for us the ultimate example of what humans are to strive for. And likewise we, Christians, are to be the reflection of Jesus to the world.

So we followers of Jesus should not assume that we know him. Who is Jesus? How did he carry himself? What did he do in difficult situations? Study the gospels to learn how Jesus thinks, talks, behaves. Get with another person or two and study a book of the Bible. Read a chapter a week.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. When you study the Gospels, notice who Jesus interacted with. So often it was people on the margins of society. But rather than marginalize them further, he treated them with compassion, getting personally involved, reaching out to them, sitting with them. How does that relate to us? It can be easy to write a check, send a gift, and feel like we are being like Christ and doing our “duty.” While those things are good and necessary, they are not the complete picture of Jesus. Instead we should build genuine caring relationships with people that are different than us.

When we are in Christ, our lives will look more and more like his. He gave of himself, sacrificially, over and over. This sacrificial pattern of his life was not just one act of sacrifice at the end. He gave sacrificially of his energy, his time, his gifts, and he did so regularly throughout his entire ministry. Then he took time to recharge. How? By getting away and sitting with God.

So what about you? What do you do to connect with God? If we are acknowledging that our identity is in God, in Jesus, those times in gathered worship with our church family, with our small group and individually with God, are where we are fulfilled and understood and loved deeply. We recharge with Him. Otherwise it’s like putting bad batteries that are nearly dead into a remote. They work for a minute but the charge will not last. It does not sustain. This is a significant way to remain in the vine; staying connected to the one who gives us life is the only way to live the abundant life we are promised and we long for.

Just to be clear: none of these things are done as a thing to earn God’s love. He loves us. Simple. You are loved by God. You are his child. He is a good God who loves his children deeply and fully. But when you choose to acknowledge your identity and walk into situations with that acknowledgement, then you will have more joy. Not necessarily an easier life, which is not a promise, but you will have joy. You will know deep love and acceptance. You will have inner strength in difficult situations.

Are you hiding who you truly are? – Our Identity: In Christ, Part 4

So often we struggle with our identity. Do you struggle with who you are? Have you ever hidden your identity? What is your true identity?

I want to bring up a story of a man who hid his identity. You can read about it in a Bible in Luke 22, starting in verse 54.

This is the story of a crisis of identity in the life of Jesus’ most famous disciple, Peter. Remember this story? The story takes place in the final hours of Jesus’ life when he was arrested. Earlier that evening, Jesus had predicted that Peter would deny Jesus, to which Peter vehemently responded, “No way, I will never do that.” But after Jesus was arrested and put on trial, after the rest of the disciples fled the scene in fear, Peter hung in there, and then he was ID’d. Look at verses 54-62. Peter should have identified with Jesus, and yet he said strongly, “I don’t know him!”

This should sound familiar, as there are ways big and small that all of us have denied him, hiding our identity.

And yet, a few days later, after his resurrection, Jesus meets with Peter on the lake shore.

Turn to John 21, which takes place maybe a few days or weeks later. Peter’s denial had never been resolved. We don’t know if any of the other disciples were aware of Peter’s denial. Did they see it? John’s account makes it seem like John was there too. Maybe John saw it go down, but it’s not certain. If no disciples heard about it, did Peter tell them what happened? Or did he hide it from them? Peter doesn’t seem like the type to hide things, but then again, it would have been embarrassing for him to reveal his total failure when he denied Jesus, hiding his identity as a disciple of Jesus. But Jesus knew. In Luke’s account we read that after Peter’s third bold denial of his identity as a follower of Jesus, when the rooster crowed, Jesus turned and looked right at him. Whew. That scene is just popping with emotion. Imagine how Jesus felt as his close friend, one of his inner three, Peter, denies him. Imagine how Peter felt when Jesus turns and looks Peter in the eye. Luke tells us Peter went outside weeping bitter tears.

So while Peter must have been elated about Jesus’ resurrection, the denial moment has never been dealt with. Peter’s betrayal is hanging like a heavy wet blanket between him and Jesus. Do you know that feeling, when there is a brokenness, a hurt between you and another person? Into that tension, look what happens in John 21, verses 15-19.

Jesus reinstates Peter, three times asking, “Do you love me?” One for each denial. He then reaffirms Peter by saying, “Feed my sheep,” three times, resurrecting Peter’s true identity, overturning each of Peter’s three denials. Jesus was saying, “Peter, you denied me…three times. You hid your identity, but all is not lost. I know who you really are. Reclaim your true identity. Live out who you truly are.”

That is what he says to each one of us too. Claim your true identity as “in Christ.” Claim the victory and new life that you have in Christ.

What we identify with shapes our actions. Allow yourself to pause and acknowledge your identity in Christ. Allow it to shape you, to shape how you think and how you look at the world, and therefore how you live.

When we so fully acknowledge with Jesus, we need not fear, because we are in him, and we can give our lives as he did for us. This is why Paul would go on to say some powerful things:

Romans 12:1-2 – Offer your bodies as living sacrifices.
Philippians 3:10 – I want to know Christ and power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering.
Galatians 2:20 – I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me.

How do we so fully identify like this with Jesus in the real world of our lives and our communities? It can be hard to know what this means. Check back in to the next post as we’ll try to answer that question.

Jesus wants us to have so much more than eternal life – Our Identity: In Christ, Part 3

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear “eternal life”? Probably heaven right? Life after death.

But that’s not the only way that Jesus talked about the new life that we can have in him. In John 10:10 he would go on to say that he came that people would have “life to the full.” I don’t think the English word “full” gives us enough of an idea of what Jesus meant there. Other translations use the word “abundance,” which is better. The word Jesus uses even goes beyond the idea of abundance. This new creation that we become, this new identity, this new life in Christ is defined this way:

“Pertaining to a quantity so abundant as to be considerably more than what one would expect or anticipate—‘that which is more than, or more than enough, beyond the norm, abundantly, superfluous.”^[1]

In Christ we have more than enough. We can so identify with Christ that we will find that we have more than enough. This goes to how we acknowledge, our identity.

So often we wrestle with a sense of longing, of emptiness, or of wanting something more out of life. We can seek to fill that emptiness with all sorts of pleasures or escapes or purchases or addictions. Those things do fill the void, but only temporarily. They can distract us from the void, but only temporarily. We are left with an incessant craving for more and more to fill the emptiness.

There is nothing that can truly fill the void, except Jesus. When we acknowledge our identity in him we have more than enough.

What we need to do then is to fully acknowledge and understand our identity in him.

I’ve noticed this in the role of pastor, and increasingly so as the years go by. You get to be known as “the pastor” or “a pastor”, and more and more that becomes not only your reputation, but also how you see yourself, how you think. The ramifications of your role start to impact your decisions.

Maybe you have an identity like that. Teacher, nurse, the numbers guy, the sports guy, grandma, hunter, the scientist, the cleaner…what are the various ways you identify yourself? It could be negative too. The can’t-keep-a-job guy. The moral failure. The relationship screw-up. The doubter. The depressed one. The anxious one.

There are so many ways we identify ourselves, but as Christians we need to acknowledge ourselves connected to Jesus. We are in Christ. Let us so deeply see and understand our lives as wrapped up in his that it affects how we think about ourselves and thus everything we do. Everything I do is affected by the fact that I am a pastor. When you are a mother or father, it is the same. When you are a grandparent, or no matter who or what you are, it is the same. Your identity leads to choices and actions.

Let us instead deeply acknowledge our identity with Jesus. As we saw last week, we need to acknowledge the truth and live in the truth that when we believe in Jesus as our Lord then we are a child of God. It is our identity! What we see this week is that we are in Christ.

Paul would specify this when he said that we are members of the body of Christ, which we see in 1 Corinthians 12. If you open your Bible to that chapter, you’ll see in the first few verses Paul talking about spiritual gifts given to us by the Spirit. Jump ahead to verses 12-13. There Paul says that we are all baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ. As he continues through verse 26, his point is that though each of has different gifts, and thus different roles in the body of Christ, like a hand or foot or eye in a human body has different roles, each one is equally important. So he concludes in verse 27 that we are all part of the body of Christ.

What is the important lesson that we learn from this? Our being in Christ is not an isolated or individual thing! We are in Christ together with one another. Being in Christ means that we must pursue unity with one another. That’s why Paul continues his flow of thought into 1st Corinthians chapter 13 saying that while there are different gifts and roles in the body of Christ, they all must submit to the most excellent gift of love.

In Christ, we love one another. That is another vital part of our identity. A family, with Jesus as our head, who love one another.

As disciples of Jesus, then, we are learners, we are his apprentices, followers, learning from him how to live. And one of the primary things he said to his disciples was “Just as I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

All of this should affect how we see ourselves. We are in Christ. “Christian” is not just a label. Or it should not just be a label. In Christ we surrender to Jesus’ way, and allow him to be more and more influential over our lives, over our choices, for our good. In Christ, his abundant life can become our life.

^[1] Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 598–599.

Who we really are in Christ – Our Identity: In Christ, Part 2

Think about how you see yourself. Is it the same as who you are? Is it possible that your self-identity is different from who you really are? I think it is very possible. Consider people that think they are losers, failures, or many other negative words. Perhaps other people told them that. Perhaps they did make a mistake or fail somehow. But is that who they really are?

Our identity is WHO we are, not how we see ourselves. The goal of this Identity series is to acknowledge and learn our identity. Given what I have said about Jesus in the previous post, we need to acknowledge the reality of who we are in Christ. Who are we in Christ?

Turn to Ephesians 1, and read verses 1-13, taking notice of how many references the writer, Paul, makes to “in Christ” you see.

A lot of “in Christ” in there, huh? When you add the instances of “in him,” it is clear that this is a major concept for Paul in this section. He is praising God the Father that we are in Christ, and he goes on to explain the blessings that are available to us because we are in Christ. In other words, for Paul, this should inform our understanding of our central identity. He is saying that he sees himself as “in Christ,” and that is a very good thing. In fact it is so good, it is hard for him to express how good it is, so he goes on and on and on continually adding to his description about how good it is that we are in Christ. Whatever this “in Christ” identity is, Paul is saying that God chose it for us, that is it a massive blessing, that is a loving thing for God to do for us, that it adopts us into his family as his sons and daughters. You might want to reflect on this passage further this week. Study Ephesians 1 and look at all the ways Paul says that “in Christ” is a good thing! You’ll notice that those in Christ are so privileged.

But what does Paul mean when he repeats over and over again that we are “in Christ”? What is this unique identity?

Paul is teaching us that there are people who are included in what we might call the salvific effectiveness of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. Salvific effectiveness? Geesh, Joel, what kind of big word is that? Let me try to explain. Salvific effectiveness refers to the idea of what Jesus accomplished through his life, death and resurrection. And whatever Jesus accomplished, those people that are “in Christ” are a part of that. In other words, what he accomplished is nothing short of amazing and fantastic, and what’s more, people can participate in it, benefit from it. What did he accomplish? Victory over of death, victory over sin, and victory over the devil! Praise God!

I love how Paul himself puts it in 1 Corinthians 15:54-55 when he describes what Jesus accomplished through his resurrection like this: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Those of us in Christ get to participate in that victory. Much of what we read in Ephesians 1 is Paul’s description of what Jesus accomplished through his life, death and resurrection.

This is our identity in Christ. This is how we Christians need to see ourselves, as participants in the victory and new life of Christ. When you come to a difficult situation do you automatically despair? Or do you know that you carry victory? That does not mean that all situations will turn out exactly like you want. But your identity is in Christ, and he is victory. So you can know that you do not need to despair, but you can walk into difficult or fearful or anxious situations with victory. Walk with confidence in the one in whose image you are made, rather than placing confidence in yourself or others. This is having confidence in the one who made you, knows you and adores you. You can face temptation with the knowledge that you are a new creation, you can face a difficult person with the knowledge that you are made in the image of God and you carry his identity, not the identity of how that person may or may not be perceiving you.

This is why Paul would also say in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come!” Think about that! In Christ we are made new. This is the miracle of resurrection. We have access to new life in Christ.

So often we consider this new life as eternal life. That is absolutely an important way to understand the new life that we have in Christ. I could point you to so many places in the New Testament that talk about this eternal life. John 3:16 is almost certainly the most famous such verse: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life.”

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear “eternal life”? Probably heaven right? Life after death.

But that’s not the only way that Jesus talked about the new life that we can have in him. In the next post we’ll examine what Jesus meant!