Have You Ever Lost Your ID?

If you've ever lost your wallet that had your photo ID and other forms of identification, you will agree it's the headache you'll remember the rest of your life. The history of identity loss can be traced back to Adam and Eve. But when they sinned, they didn’t just lose their ID cards. They actually lost their identity, and became something God never intended—merely human. Consequently, God purposed to reclaim His ‘lost’ ones, and restore their spiritual identity as His children.

When Jesus was raised from the dead, He was unrecognizable by even His most intimate friends: Mary Magdalene, the disciples, and even John and Peter. Thus Paul clarifies: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer” (2 Cor. 5:16 NASB). Then, applying this to us, Paul explains: “What this means is that those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun!” (2 Cor. 5:17 NLT) In other words, like Jesus, we should be longer recognizable as the ‘humans’ we were.

Jesus first introduced this idea of changing His identity when He referred to Himself as the “grain of wheat” that must go into the earth and die in order to emerge as something/someone new (John 12:24). In the earth, the grain of wheat is cracked open and destroyed—losing its identity. In God’s inside-out economy, losing your identity is not bad. In fact, it is essential if you want to experience your new one in Christ. For then, “just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:49). Wouldn't it be great if someone were to look at you and say "What happened to you? I hardly recognize you!"

Cash for Clunkers: “You Are What You Drive!”

While watching Cable news over the weekend, I couldn’t believe my ears. In arguing the merits of the “Cash for Clunkers” program, one commentator asked another “Isn’t it irresponsible for the government to encourage people who have just lost or may lose their job to buy a brand new car?” The other responded “I think it would give someone a better self-image to have a brand new car to drive, especially a nicer car, like a BMW, they might not afford without help from the government ($4500 trade in for a ‘clunker’). “After all,” the commentator said, “You are what you drive.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised; after all, isn’t this how “earthlings” define their self-worth—by what they drive, what they wear, what they do, where they live? Without knowing they were created to bear God’s image, they bear the image of those who are “earthy” (1 Cor. 15:48), and identifying themselves by earthy standards!

I don’t drive a luxury car or live in a ‘status’ home, but such labels don’t affect me. Why? because I am no longer “earthy”—I am “heavenly”—“for the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14). Nor will I use such labels to judge my brothers and sisters in Christ, for “I have stopped evaluating others by what the world thinks about them…” (2 Cor. 5:16, NLT).

I don’t drive a clunker: I drive a Focus. But it has nothing to do with my self-image. His image in me—not self-image—is what matters to me…“Just as we have born the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:49). By the way, the car that defines me hasn’t been invented yet!