When my daughter was younger she would say a great many things that I found amusing and the Lord often used things she said to speak to my heart or to trigger a story. Once while watching a nature show she turned to me and said, “I want to be a scientist when I grow up. I’m not exactly sure what that means but I want to be one.” Stifling my laughter, I tried to explain it to her as best I could. I wasn’t sure why, but her words stuck with me for a while after that. But at last, I finally figured out what was nagging at me about what she said. I realized that her words pretty much sum up the way most people view their identity in Christ. “I want to be a Christian. I’m not really sure what that means but I want to be one.”
I know this because I used to live that way myself. I was a Christian for many, many years but had no idea what that actually meant. Yes, I knew I was saved, but I knew nothing about my true identity in Christ. I had no idea what being a Christian actually meant! I had no idea who I was in Christ. All I knew was that I was saved from going to hell and that some day heaven would be my home. I knew I “should” pray and read my Bible, but I knew nothing about who I now was as a child of God. No one had ever taught me what had truly happened to me at the moment of my salvation, so although I was a Christian, I still struggled with living in the victory I should have been experiencing.
All that changed when I was introduced to a class called Freedom in Christ. For the first time in my life, I began to learn who I was in Christ, and it completely transformed my life. I actually took the class two years in a row because I wanted to learn as much as I could about who I was in Christ and what it meant to be a daughter of the Most High God. It is extremely hard to live victoriously when you have no idea who you are. It is like walking around with amnesia, you have no idea who you are and what you are capable of. Learning who you are in Christ and learning how to live and walk in the freedom Christ died to give you is critically important for every believer.
How can you live the Christian life the way you are supposed to live it if you don’t know what it means to be a Christian? You can’t. You must know who you are in Christ and what it means to be a Christian if you want to be the man or woman God created and called you to be. It would be like taking a job and being expected to perform well at it when you had absolutely no idea how to do what you were hired to do. Unless your name is Jason Bourne, you are not going to do well trying to maneuver through life without knowing who you are. You need to know who you are, my friend. You need to know that you are a joint heir with Christ and that all that He has is yours as well (Romans 8:17).
If you don’t know that “there is now no condemnation” for you in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1), you will struggle with shame and guilt. If you don’t know that you are now a saint (Eph, 1:1), you will continue to think of yourself as a sinner, and you will struggle with behaving like one. If you do not understand and know that you are complete in Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior (Col. 2:10), you will constantly search for someone or something to complete you. If you don’t know that apart from Him you can do nothing (John 15:5) but THROUGH HIM, you can “do all things” (Phil. 4:13), then you will vacillate between trying to do it all on your own and doubting that you can do it at all.
These are just a few examples of how vital it is that you know who you are in Christ. There are so many Scriptures that explain your new identity as a believer. I highly recommend spending some time researching your new identity. I recommend doing some serious investigating of who you really are in Christ. You will be amazed at what God has to say about you, my friend. I would be willing to say that most of the people reading these words have no idea of who they truly are in Christ. I urge you to take the time to find out. Take it from someone who knows; it will change your life. You will never regret learning your true identity and it will transform the way you see yourself and the way you live.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come. 2 Cor. 5:17
Katrina Douglas
- For more information about Freedom in Christ ministries please go to freedominchrist.com
