There is an identity crisis in God’s church today that is causing much frustration, guilt and defeat. The dictionary defines identity as the distinguishing character or personality of an individual, having the sameness of essential character with something or someone.
An identity crisis is “the emotional confusion and maladjustment that arises when unable to attain mental identification because of conflicting demands and pressures.” An identity crisis comes when we begin to question who we are and who we should identify with.
God’s people have had such crises through the ages – there was a huge identity crisis at the time of the flood. Noah and his family weren’t the only ones who professed to follow God. There were others who believed but were afraid to openly identify with the truth. Lot’s wife had an identity crisis and lost her life because of it. The Israelites had an identity crisis shortly after coming into the land of Canaan - they wanted to be like the nations around them.
Throughout history there have always been those who boldly identified with God or satan. The majority of the people are in the middle because they have an identity crisis - sometimes identifying with one group, sometimes with the other. Before Jesus returns the middle group will be gone. There will only be two groups – those having the same essential character as God and those who having the character of satan.
The identifying labels God gives to these two groups are not “the saved” and “the unsaved”. Those aren’t Biblical terms. The word unsaved isn’t in the Bible and the word saved is only used to describe something done for a person – not a person’s relationship with God.
Christian/Christians is used 3 times. “The redeemed” - 4 times.
Believer(s) is only used 4 times; unbeliever(s) - 10 times.
The labels used more often are saint and sinner. Saint(s) is used 97 times to describe those have surrendered their lives to God, while sinner(s) is use 67 times to describe those who haven’t.
If we are uncomfortable identifying ourselves as “saints” then we can use God’s #1 term: “righteous” - used 182 times to describe those who walk with God. The righteous are contrasted with the “wicked” - used 278 times to describe those who follow satan.
There is an identity crisis in the church. We are not comfortable identifying ourselves as “wicked” and we are not comfortable identifying ourselves as “saints” or “righteous.” Our favorite label seems to be “sinner.” Something is not right when we identify with a term God uses to describe those who are lost.
The apostle Paul didn’t have an identity crisis. He knew who he was identified with and wanted others to have the same confidence in who they were.
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
If we have been washed, sanctified and justified in Christ, then what are we now? “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). If we are still sinners then what has passed away? What has become new?
Peter reminds us that we are “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that (we) may proclaim the praises of Him who called (us) out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).
He also tells us that God
“has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, and escape the corruption that is in the world through lusts” (2 Peter 1:3-4).
On the one hand we are quick to tell others that Christ came to redeem us from sin and set us free from its power. We assure them that in Christ they are a new creation, the old is gone and they are now partakers of His divine nature. Then we turn around and say “Don’t feel bad, we’re all sinners, just do the best you can; God understands.” Talk about an identity crisis! Why the reluctance to call ourselves by the terms God calls us?
This identity crisis comes out in many ways. How many are familiar with the analogy of the church being a hospital for sinners? It is a hospital for sinners, but who are the doctors and nurses in this hospital? As church members we are the staff of the hospital. We are the saints whose job is to go out to the highways and byways to find those who are sick (sinners), and bring them to the hospital (the church) so they can find healing (become saints). When the sinners accept the medicine the saints are dispensing (the gospel), they are healed and become a part of the hospital staff. They in turn go out to bring in others who are sick to fill the sick-beds they used to be in.
How many would want to be treated at a hospital where the doctors and nurses were in sick beds themselves, or hooked up to I.V. bottles or respirators? Would you have confidence in a facility like that? To be a member of the hospital and remain in a sick bed year after year is to be a reproach to God.
That may sound harsh but think it through. Has God given us medicine powerful enough to heal us from the disease of sin? Has He made provision not only for healing but also for complete transformation so we can be partakers of His divine nature? If this is true, and we claim to have this medicine yet remain infected with sin year after year, what conclusions can the world come to? There can be only 2: Either the medicine is a scam or the hospital staff are con-artists (which brings upon God), or the medicine does work but the staff aren’t taking it which brings condemnation on us as hypocrites.
How we think about ourselves effects the way we act. If we think of ourselves as sinners we will act like sinners; if we think of ourselves as saints we will be more careful in how we live. The Bible is clear regarding what God has called us to be: “To all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints” (Romans 1:7). “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints…” (1 Corinthians 1:2). The church at Corinth weren’t very saintly, but Paul reminds them of who they are and calls them out of their identity crisis.
Who we identify with has some end time implications as well. Daniel 7:22 says “the Ancient of Days came, and a judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for the saints to possess the kingdom.” It’s not sinners who possess God’s kingdom, it’s the saints.
Trying reading Revelations 14:12 using the term we often use to identify ourselves: “Here is the patience of the sinners; here are those who keep the Commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” That just doesn’t sound right, does it? Sinners don’t keep the Commandments of God, that’s why they are called sinners. It’s the saints who keep the Commandments of God.
Revelation 20:7-9 describes the final cleansing of the universe:
“Now when the thousands years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations…to gather them together for battle…They went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city.”
(If the saints are in the Holy City, where are the sinners? Outside the city.) “And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them.”
Could it be that we are reluctant to let go of the term sinner because we like to keep back door open just in case we want to use it sometimes? Maybe we don’t want to burn all our bridges with the past life of sin. In false humility we say, “I don’t want to take the name saint because I may not be able to live up to it in the details of my life. I don’t doubt what God says, I just doubt my abilities.” This is wrong on two points:
1. It has nothing to do with our abilities – it has everything to do with our choices. God provides all the resources we need to back up our right choices.
2. We rarely doubt ourselves, but often doubt God. We don’t believe He can or will do what He has promised. If we really believed God would do in us what He has promised to do, we would hold on to His teachings regardless of our circumstances or feelings. We would often be on our knees in prayer throughout the day pleading for whatever we needed to remain a saint in our thoughts, words, attitude and actions.
A sinner is one who knows what God has called him to do but chooses not to do it unless it is convenient or desirable to do so. A saint is one who used to be a sinner but has accepted God’s gift of salvation and now identities with Christ. Is a saint perfect? No. He is constantly learning of things in his life that are offensive to a pure and holy God. Once he knows God’s standard he adopts it as his own without arguing about it. He surrenders those things which are offensive, and by the power of the Holy Spirit brings his life into harmony with the new understanding of truth.
A saint says with the apostle Paul,
“I am crucified with Christ: never-theless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20 KJV).
Praise God! Jesus knows our faith isn’t strong enough so He gives us His faith to live by.
I like the way God’s messenger puts it in “Our High Calling” p. 48: “Christ's overcoming and obedience is that of a true human being. In our conclusions, we make many mistakes because of our erroneous views of the human nature of our Lord. When we give to His human nature a power that it is not possible for man to have in his conflicts with Satan, we destroy the completeness of His humanity. His imputed grace and power He gives to all who receive Him by faith.
“The obedience of Christ to His Father was the same obedience that is required of man. Man cannot overcome Satan's temptations without divine power to combine with his instrumentality. So with Jesus Christ; He could lay hold of divine power. He came not to our world to give the obedience of a lesser God to a greater, but as a man to obey God's Holy Law, and in this way He is our example. The Lord Jesus came to our world, not to reveal what a God could do, but what a man could do, through faith in God's power to help in every emergency. Man is, through faith, to be a partaker in the divine nature, and to overcome every temptation wherewith he is beset…The humanity of the Son of God is everything to us. It is the golden chain that binds our souls to Christ, and through Christ to God.”
Jesus told a parable in Matthew 22 which speaks to this point. “The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son.” Those who had been invited refused to come so the king sent his servants out to invite “as many as they could find” to the banquet. With the invitation came a wedding garment from the king so they could be appropriately dressed for the occasion. Before the banquet began the king came in to greet the guests. “He saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless” (verses 11-12). Why was he speechless? Because he had no excuse. He was offered a garment but didn’t think it mattered whether he wore it or not. “The king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (v. 13).
The wedding garment represent the righteousness of Christ. Only those who are clothed with the righteousness of Christ will be accepted into the marriage supper of the Lamb. You may be saying, “O yes, I know we must be covered by Christ’s righteousness for we can never be good enough on our own. Christ must cover us so when God looks at us He won’t see us but Christ.” This may sound good but it is a deception of the devil.
When I was young my parents, pastors, and teachers told me God could see everything, nothing was hidden from His sight. Then they told me that if I was covered with Christ’s righteousness God couldn’t see my sins. Talk about confusion! Is it our Lord’s desire to cover our sins so God can’t see them or to remove them altogether?
What does it mean to wear the robe of Christ’s righteousness?
“When we submit ourselves to Christ, the heart is united with His heart the will is merged with His will, the thoughts are brought into captivity to Him; we live His life. This is what it means to be clothed with the garment of His righteousness. Then as the Lord looks upon us He sees, not the nakedness and deformity of sin, but His own robe of righteousness, which is perfect obedience to His law.” Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 312
Why doesn’t God see the nakedness and deformity of our sin? Not because Christ is hiding it from Him, but because it is not there. By the power of God’s grace we are transformed, we have become one with Christ, “partakers of the divine nature”, saints of God.
Jesus is not in the business of covering our sins, He’s in the business of removing our sins. In vision, the prophet Zechariah saw
“Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and satan standing at his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to satan, ‘The Lord rebuke you, satan!...Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?’ Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and was standing before the Angel, then He answered and spoke to those standing before Him, saying, ‘Take away the filthy garments from him.’ And to him He said, ‘See, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes’” (Zechariah 3:1-4).
“As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12).
God says:
“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and will you keep My judgments and do them” (Ezekiel 36:25-27).
Let me be quick to add, this righteousness is not something we can boast about as if it is ours. It is Christ in us the hope of glory. To borrow the words of Paul again,
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed – always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” (2 Cor. 4:7-10).
The real question, friends, is not whether we can be saints, but whether we want to be saints. We may offer excuses for the defects of our character now, but in that day when we stand before God we will be speechless like the man in the parable. We will then see that God had indeed provided everything we needed for life and godliness but we didn’t value it enough to make it ours.
Let’s stop the identity crisis in the church. Remember, Satan’s greatest victories come by shaking our confidence in our identity. God’s greatest triumphs come when we know who we are and live it.
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Dick Bullock is the pastor of 3 churches in “the Thumb” of Michigan.