“Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”
-Ephesians 2:7-10 (MSG)
If I asked, “Who are you?” how would you answer that question? We have lots of identities—race and religion, gender and geography, political party and marital status. I’m a husband to Lora and a father to Parker, Summer, and Josiah. I’m a pastor and an author. I’m an ENFP on the Myers-Briggs and a type 3 achiever on the Enneagram.
All those identities are pieces of my puzzle, but none of them represents my primary identity. My primary identity is who I am in Christ. The phrase in Christ is found 164 times in the Pauline epistles. It’s the key that unlocks our identity, our destiny, and our authority.
You are not defined by the things you’ve done wrong. You are defined by what Christ did right—His righteousness. I may not know you from Adam, but I know who you are. You are the image of God. You are the apple of God’s eye. You are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works prepared for you in advance.
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, much of the first chapter is a poem. It’s twelve verses in English, but it’s one sentence in the original language. It’s the longest sentence in the Bible. If you read it right, you’ll never see yourself the same way again. It flips the script by revealing who you are and whose you are:
You are blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
You were chosen before the beginning of time.
You are blameless in the eyes of God.
You are adopted by the heavenly Father.
You are redeemed by the blood of Christ.
You are sealed by the Holy Spirit.
You are stamped with the image of God.
(Ephesians 1:3–14)
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