Our Identity in Christ
By John Hooper
Much is said these days about identity and lifestyle. They have become buzz words for the wicked philosophy of our age. The world says, “I adopt the identity and follow the lifestyle that is ‘right’ for me, and you adopt the identity and follow the lifestyle that is ‘right’ for you.” By ‘right,’ of course, is not meant an objective standard of truth but whatever each of us finds comfortable. We are to be guided by our feelings, by an inner sense of what we think we are or what we want to be, regardless of what an objective entity like biology might be telling us. Nothing else and no-one else is able to determine for me my identity, and increasingly this kind of thinking is accompanied by an angry intolerance.
Against this crass individualism of unbelief stands the distinctly Christian identity that is not determined by internal feelings but by the believer’s objective union with Christ. This takes us to the very heart of who we are as Christians. We are united to Christ. To use the phrase so beloved of the apostle Paul, we are “in Christ” (he uses those exact words no fewer than seventy-five times). This is the defining principle of the Christian life. It is this which identifies us. It is profound, far-reaching, and fundamental to the gospel that we believe, love and declare.
And in relation to the Christian identity, we strive to live the Christian lifestyle, a way of life that is not governed by what we want, how we feel, what we think is right, nor by what suits us and makes us happy and comfortable, but by the standard that is set for us by the living God in His Word.
No short cut
The Colossian believers to whom Paul writes were seeking to live as Christians but found that they were struggling. It is not easy to live contrary to the spirit of the age so they were still holding on to some of their old pagan practices. They did not know how to deal with their old sins, their old desires, their old temptations, and we too know what that means. Many years ago I heard an elderly preacher say, “Don’t think that as you get older and wiser in the faith the Christian life gets easier – it doesn’t.” I found that rather discouraging, but as the years have passed, I have found it to be true. Ann Brontë was right to warn us in her hymn, “Believe not those who say the upward path is smooth.”
Union with Christ
These young Colossian believers were vulnerable to teachers who were promoting an easy way, a short cut, a smooth ride to heaven. Many times, Paul warns them of this (see Colossians 1:28;2:4,8,18-23) and reminds them of their union with the Lord Jesus Christ. This is where the answer, the cure to their struggles lay, not in a short cut or some higher-life spirituality. The Colossian letter is full of Christ and of the believer’s union with Him, and Paul uses this truth to show the Colossians how they are to live their lives. Notice Paul making the connection: “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him” (verse 6). “Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances …” (verse 20). “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above …” (see 3:1).
What God has done for us, in uniting us to His Son, Jesus Christ, has consequences for the way we live. Our lifestyle and conduct are determined by what we have become in Christ. It is there in the very opening of Paul’s letter, written to those “in Christ which are at Colossae.” Their identity was not determined by their environment, the city in which they lived, the people among whom they walked, nor yet by their own genetic, biological and emotional make-up, but by their union with Christ. Whatever else might identify us in this world, it is trumped by our union with Christ (see Colossians 3:11 and Galatians 3:28).
Identity
The world has rather a lot to say about identity. “My identity is who I am,” it proudly declares. We hear a lot of talk about “orientation identity” and “gender identity,” both of which are based on subjective feelings, a person’s “innate sense” of who or what they are. But what about the Christian’s identity? Is our identity in Christ based on feelings, or some innate subjective “sense,” leading to a life-choice that we have made? Have we decided to self-identify ourselves as Christians? There are some whose theology may well lead them in that direction, but it is not what the Spirit of God is saying in Colossians 3, nor anywhere else in Scripture. We have not self-identified. Having been united to Christ, we have been given a new identity.
Where is Christ? He is in heaven, ascended to the Father’s right hand, and so we have these amazing words at the beginning of Colossians 3, “If ye then be risen with Christ.” Just three verses earlier (2:20) the apostle had said that the believers to whom he writes had died with Christ, so if they had died with Christ, most certainly too they had risen with Him. Here we are stepping onto profound and holy ground. What does it mean?
Tension
Just think about this for a moment: we are in this world, and yet we are in union with Christ, who is in heaven. We are living in this world, but as those who are in union with Christ we have a presence in heaven. Our identity is in heaven because we are risen with Christ.
To put it slightly differently, we might tend to think that this world is where we are for now, for the present, as pilgrims and lodgers, while our eternal home is in heaven with Christ. That is where we belong. We like to think of heaven as our glorious future. But even this is true only up to a point for there is a very real sense in which our future there has already begun. Since we are in Christ, and He is already there, our future in heaven has already begun! The implication is that even here and now, being united to Christ, we have a taster of what is to come. And this has consequences for us as we live out our lives in this world. This is what Paul is saying in Colossians 3:1.
What these Colossian believers were experiencing, though they would not have expressed it like this before Paul wrote to them, is what one preacher has described as “the tension between what they are now and what they one day would be” (Derek Thomas). Since our identity is in Christ in heaven, there is a tension between what we are and what we should be. There is a conflict, because what we should be is what we shall be, but we cannot yet be what we shall be.
There is a conflict here, a kind of contradiction, a dilemma. These “saints and faithful brethren” are “in Christ” (1:2), united to Him, dead with Him and risen with Him. Their life is “hid with Christ in God” (3:3) – what a profound statement is that! – and yet, they are presently “at Colossae” (1:2). They are not of the world, but for the brief years of this life they are still in it. They are still in their flesh. They are sinners prone to all the temptations that are common to man. That is their dilemma, that is their predicament, and it is ours too.
So, what are they to do? What are we to do?
1. Mortification
“Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth” (3:5). Paul does not hold back here. In speaking of sin, he does not use non-specific, general terms as we might be prone to do. No, he uses the shock factor. He names sins: “fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (verse 5). In verse 8 he lists even more, but we will stay with verse 5 because it is such an interesting set of vices, largely of a sexual nature. Notice Paul’s use of the word “members” to describe these sins. Why does he do that? Is it not because they are closely identified with certain bodily “members” in our flesh that we carry with us for as long as we are upon this earth? Thus, Calvin says of these members, these sins, that they “stick close to us.” Indeed, does not the word member suggest something that is so close to us as to be a very part of us?
So, when Paul says “Mortify therefore your members …,” he is telling us to put to death intrinsic elements of what we are. Our Lord uses very similar language in His Sermon on the Mount:
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. (Matthew 5:27-29)
Previous to their conversion the Colossians had walked and lived in these sins. It was their lifestyle, but although these vices were simply not compatible with their being one with Christ, Paul’s admonishing of them to mortify their members is an indication that they were continuing to struggle with them. Even though they had put off the old man with his deeds (Colossians 3:9) and put on the new man (verse 10), there was still to be an on-going putting off (verse 8) and putting on (verse 12). This is the believer’s daily struggle. It is a struggle from which we will not be delivered until we are called home to glory. For as long as we are in this world, striving to live faithfully as those who are in union with Christ, a battle royal is under way, and we know it.
The body
Nowhere do we see this incompatibility more clearly and starkly displayed by Paul than in 1 Corinthians 6. There we learn that some professing believers in Corinth had been visiting brothels. Once again, the shock factor comes into play. How could such a thing be happening? The answer lies in a doctrinal error that had its origin in Greek philosophy but which quickly took hold in those early years of the New Testament church. There was a teaching going around that the body, being a mere physical entity, was inferior to the soul. The body does not matter because it is the soul that is saved, and by its actions the body is unable to affect the soul, much less to do it harm.
Incidentally, let me say as an aside that this illustrates for us of the importance of sound doctrine. Doctrine impacts on lifestyle. When the lifestyle falls short, invariably we will find the root of the problem lying in a doctrinal error, and that was precisely the problem in Corinth. Paul takes them straight to the doctrinal root of the issue: “Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?” (verses 13,15). He takes them straight to the doctrine of the believer’s union with Christ and points out to them that not only the soul is “in Christ” but the body too, and this will have profound repercussions for their lifestyle. “Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid” (verse 15). Paul, under inspiration of course, could hardly have made his point more graphically.
The apostle’s argument means that as those who are united to Christ, everywhere we go, in everything we do, we take Christ with us, even in our sin. When we sin, whether with the mind or the body, we sin in union with Christ, uniting Christ to our sin. This is what Paul is saying. As Derek Thomas has commented pointedly, when we sin in the bedroom, we cannot leave Christ outside the door. The application can be extended to all areas of life. When we sin on holiday, we have not left Christ at home; when we sin in the workplace, He is there; when we sin in those places of entertainment and pleasure that we like to visit, we take Christ with us. This is the horror of sin, and the thought of the shame it brings to our Saviour should drive us ever more speedily to repentance.
Is not this, then, the greatest incentive we can possibly have to persevere in the battle day after day, constantly to be mortifying our sins, always to be putting them off – for the sake of Christ?
2. Cultivation
Our Lord is “Christ in you the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (3:12-13). Do these graces and attributes not remind you of Christ Himself? We have been given a new identity in Christ, and here is the character and lifestyle that corresponds to that new identity. Here are the graces, the virtues that should be demonstrated in our lives and seen by those around us. They are the graces and virtues of our Saviour. Let us clothe ourselves in His kindness, His humbleness of mind, His meekness and longsuffering, His forbearance, His forgiveness, so that even as Christ forgave us, we will also do the same to one another. In other words, we are to cultivate the life of Christ within.
The Word
How are we to do this? It is the great practical conundrum, but the solution is given to us: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom” (verse 16). Ah, the Word! Notice that it is the Word of Christ. Here is the great antidote to sin! Our infallible guide through life! Our teacher!
Do we let the Word “dwell in us,” or is it just a casual visitor? How much time do we give to it? Do we allow the Word to soak into us, as it were? It is the very Word of Christ and as the Word of Christ dwells in us, so it will come out of us in “teaching and admonishing one another … and … singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (verse 16).
The conflict
Our feet are upon the earth, but our hearts are in heaven; we are in the world, but our identity is in Christ. As we seek to live according to our identity, our lifestyle grows increasingly out of kilter with the lifestyles of those around us, and that puts us in a conflict with our own flesh and with the world. It is an antithetical life and it is a hard struggle. We have to bear the cross and there is no other way, there is no easier way, no short cut. This is the way it is meant to be.
We know this from our own experience, don’t we? There is a conflict from which we cannot escape. The more we seek “those things which are above, where Christ sitteth” (3:1), the more effort Satan makes to keep us looking to this world. The more we put to death our “members which are upon the earth” (verse 5), the hotter the conflict with the flesh becomes. Paul himself knew it, and in Romans 7 he records his own experiences for our instruction and comfort: “the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (verse 19).
In the Lord’s goodness, we have been given every necessary help. Our union with Christ is not some obscure point of deep theology: it is of immense practical importance. Neither is it only our identity, for it is also the source of the power that enables us to live out our identity in this present evil world (see Colossians 2:6-10a). Our identity both determines and empowers our way of life and, best of all, it keeps us and prepares us for the day of transformation and triumph that is to come. Then “we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).