Branded for Christ!
Ahhh…the question of the ages…Who Am I? Philosophers, poets, great thinkers – and you – have pondered this question for eons. The desire to know who we are and how we fit into the bigger picture is not unusual. I actually think God uses this desire to draw us to Him.
God answers this question throughout His love letter to us – the Bible. My goodness, the letter to the Ephesians alone tells us much about who we are “in Christ”. Here is a quick (but not exhaustive) list just from Ephesians 1-2:
- We have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places
- God chose us before the foundation of the world
- We have redemption through Jesus’ blood and the forgiveness of sins
- We are sealed in Christ through the Holy Spirit of promise
- We have obtained an inheritance
- We are raised up with Christ and seated with Him in the heavenly places
- We are His workmanship (poiema in Greek), in other words, His poetic masterpiece!
- We have been brought near to God through the blood of Christ
Some of us derive our sense of identity by simply observing everyone else around us. Do we look and act and smell like everyone else? If not, we get a little panicky! We don’t belong – oh my! Well that is totally ok. Paul tells us in Galatians 6:12 that there are people who “desire to make a good showing in the flesh” so they will not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.
We do this too. We mute Christ’s presence in our lives to the point that we couldn’t be picked out of a worldly crowd! This tendency in Christians has led us into an extreme case of spiritual anemia. We have become weak and ineffective because we have no confidence in who we really are in Christ.
When we really get who we are “in Christ”, then we will begin exuding Christ-like confidence. We will not boast about who we are in the flesh, but we will boast in the cross of Jesus Christ! No longer will we need to seek the answer to the “Who am I?” question because El Elyon, the Most High God, has identified us as His own and has set His seal upon us – Praise God!
The real question is…with whom are we trying to identify? Paul finished his letter to the church of Galatia by declaring that he bears in his body the brand-marks of Jesus. I think it is interesting that the word brand-mark in the Greek is “stigma” (Galatians 6:17).
We often think of stigma as being a mark of disgrace, but it is simply an identifying mark. For centuries, people have branded livestock to identify the animal as belonging to them alone. Is your life branded unashamedly for the one who gladly bore your sin on the cross? If so, than start living the abundant life that is marked by confidence in knowing who you are – and whose you are – in Christ!
