Coming Into Our Identity
We all fail at walking in step with Jesus. Sometimes our steps divert from where He is going and before we know it, we are headed in the wrong direction. This wrong direction can be analogous to wrong thinking, practices, and habits that are not like Jesus and His way. We have the capacity to either choose to stay on this wrong path, or we can respond to His gentle nudging and get back in step with Him again. “Walking in the Spirit” is a proper term for this response as we actively follow Jesus. When we walk with The Spirit on a continual basis we will head in the right direction. As a result, we become transformed more into the image of Christ. This transformation restores us to God’s intention for humanity in the beginning. It is to be connected to Himself and for us to be full of righteousness, peace, and joy. This after all is The Kingdom of God. In our individual lives it looks like the character of Christ. Our lives also become pictures of the redemptive work of Christ in the world, healing it. And yes, we all stumble forward into this Kingdom and what it looks like. None of us have the capacity to walk in the fulness of righteousness, peace, and joy by ourselves. To be as Christ comes with being transformed in Christ. As Dallas Willard famously said, it is a “renovation of the heart.” The heart is changed day by day, through our successes and failures in attempting to stay in lockstep with the Spirit. This character of Jesus, and this restored image of God becomes more visible on the outside as we sojourn on. It is a process and it cannot be rushed. Therefore we must be cognizant that we are always in a stage of this process and have grace for ourselves. It is also important to understand what the “heart” is and its’ function. Throughout the history of the church it is known as the place inside us where spiritual growth actually happens.
The concept of the heart in the Bible is distinct from the modern western concept of loving feeling (though that is an aspect of it). In the Hebrew Bible the heart is the seat of the will and deliberation [1]. It was seen as the center of the person where the conscience dwelt [2]. In a sense it is the true self, “the inner life” as some say. It is also the center of spiritual life and the place where God changes us [3]. As we consider the concept of the heart in the context of the biblical writers, we learn that it is here where the ability to walk with the Spirit happens. Our hearts are the temples of God. This is the place of deep unseen fellowship with Him. This is also the place where God communicates to us and reminds us who we truly are.
When we fail at walking with Jesus, we tend to think that the failure itself defines us. When we get out of lockstep with The Lord, we tend to stay frozen in shame and fear instead of running back to Him and following behind again. It is in the heart that we let God’s words reassure us and bring us back to alignment. It is Jesus calling us back to His intention for what people are supposed to look like. We discover here in our inner temple, that what He says about us is what truly defines us. There is a knowing that goes beyond rational thought. It is a knowing in the center of us, the intuitive heart. It is here God speaks to the soul and it becomes changed by the truth. When Paul contrasts trying to change one’s own heart (and justify oneself before God), he uses the analogy of slavery and adoption. He concludes that we can know who we are in Christ by the Spirit’s testimony in our hearts. It is this revelation to our seat of being that we cry out in faith “Abba Father!”[4]. Abba was a term of endearment and intimacy and was the equivalent to the English “Daddy”. Paul was saying that we know who we are by this other type of knowledge. It is spiritual, and it is personal. It is the intuitive, internal voice of the Spirit[5]. Therefore whatever we have done in our past no longer defines us. It is this adoption and belonging to God through His own Son that gives us life and meaning. Our lives are now forever intertwined with the life of Christ. He calls us sons and daughters. Now when we stumble and fail, we run to Him and not away from Him. Shame is not our portion.
So when I am convicted of what the bible calls “sin”, it is The Spirit shepherding me back into lockstep with Himself. Jesus and His way is the truth. He reveals our sin as the great “un-truth”. Sin loses its appeal by the truth itself. The ugliness of sin is contrasted with the beautiful and brilliant life of the Spirit. However, for us to see this appeal and beauty we must have our hearts changed and renewed. We have been born into a world where people think what is normal and good (parabolically speaking), is like growing up eating brown grass and being ignorant that there is better grass on another hill that is brilliant and green. We have been eating this brown grass so long we think it’s truly good. Subsequentially it is when we are shown the other hill where this healthy grass grows, we see reality for what it is. Reality becomes illuminated through the revelation that we have been wrong and that there is a better way. We have to come into the truth with Jesus and see that His way is truly the best way. It is a way of the changed heart, recognized by a life full of peace and joy. In order for this to happen The Spirit shows us that we have been living in “un-truth”. We have let the brown grass define our diet and malnourish us. The Spirit challenges us to see the good grass and leave this murky hill we call home and seek the true sustenance. Therefore we let God define what it means to be human and not by what our culture thinks it is. We cannot convey the weight of this unless there is indeed a change of heart. It is seeing what is true where before there was blindness and ignorance. The heart in a sense has eyes that open to God’s revelation of Jesus[6]. Someone who hasn’t allowed Jesus into their heart does not understand the beauty of this Man and His way of life. Therefore we cannot argue someone into this revelation. The Spirit will knock, but our heart has to open to Him. We must learn to be patient with our secular culture which cannot see or hear. Aggression and anger at people will not crack open the door. It is by the love shown in the crucified Christ; revealed by The Spirit, that causes a change of heart. It is then that we will have to make a choice: Truth or the un-truth. Ultimately the Truth is a Person, either to accept or reject.
If we by grace accept the Person of Christ, our identity becomes one who is seated in heavenly places with Christ[7]. This truth about our identity helps us in our struggle to overcome sin. Christ sits in a place of all authority[8]. In His place of authority He declares that we are sons, no longer slaves to sin or fear.
There is power in identity. What we believe about ourselves to be true profoundly affects us. If we believe we are terrible, miserable creatures we will act like it. However, If we believe we are who Christ says we are, we will hear His voice in the scriptures and feel the peace of God reaffirming our adoption. This knowledge is of course interior knowledge that The Spirit gives. It is our place of safety when temptation comes. Temptation always tries to move us out of our chair, our place in the heavenlies with Christ. By faith we know we are with Christ in heavenly places regardless. The enemies’ strategy attempts to lie to us and convince us that we are still in fact orphans. He tempts us with the other way, the un-truth. He tries to convince us that it is a nourishing path. We soon find out though that this “nourishment” is just really the brown grass that while tasting familiar, makes us sick. Jesus however gives nourishment that satiates us yet also challenges us. God’s ways tend to aggravate the parts of us that want to rebel, but in the end, He always gives us real life. Some wisdom I have learned through the process is that this aggravation means that there are still parts of me that have not become like Christ. These places in my heart still stubbornly cling on and The Spirit has to gently unveil them to me so I can gain true freedom. I have found God’s grace in the midst of my mistakes. So when I fail, I fail forward. I’ve discovered again and again that we don’t leave our positions as the adopted in God’s family. Sometimes we just live like we are still orphans and we mistakenly believe that we have to shepherd ourselves. The voice of the true Shepherd will always lead us to the nutrition on the hill beyond the dead grass. At times I go back to the old and familiar. Yet Christ always compels me to follow Him into the place of intimacy and of the holy, where my heart and intentions lie naked. Even though this can be scary, it is a good scary. The Truth should and will challenge us. I am very thankful that The Truth also knows my frailty and loves me in my humanity. He loves me enough to heal me, even if pulling out the thorns hurt like hell. God is indeed love, so He loves us enough to remove all the brown grass so that nothing but green can grow. He does this so our hearts can become a beautiful garden. In a sense it is Eden inwardly returning and righteousness flourishing.
In conclusion, we will find real life with Jesus and that life begins in the heart. Let us follow The Spirit and when we fail (which we will), we will remember who we are: sons and daughters chosen by The King. Who we believe we are will end up defining us. Whose voice will we listen to? Lord, renovate our hearts.
[1] Jenni and Westermann: Theological Lexicon of The Old Testament. Vol. 2 Pg. 638
[2] New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible: Vol. 2 pg. 764-765
[3] Verbrugge: New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology pg. 288-289
[4] Galatians 4:1-7
[5] For a good resource concerning discerning The Holy Spirit’s voice see The Voice of Jesus: Discernment, Prayer, and the Witness of The Spirit by Gordon T. Smith
[6] Ephesians 1:17-23 Paul prays that the Ephesians would have an illumination of the Spirit about the riches of Christ.
[7] Ephesians 2:6
[8] See Psalm 110. The early church referenced this Psalm in regard to Christ more than any other Old Testament passage.
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