Our True Identity — A LifeWords Devotion

Whenever we are asked to establish our identity, we usually have to produce some sort of documentation to indicate we are who we say we are. But we realise a birth certificate, passport, or licence doesn’t tell anyone who we really are, what sort of person we are.

It has been said that we are the products of those who love us or who failed to love us. Our present characters are formed, enriched, or distorted, by the imperfect nurture we have experienced in our earlier days. We are imperfect people because we have been raised in an imperfect world. My strengths reflect my father’s strengths, my weaknesses reflect his weaknesses. We bring this mixed raw material into our pattern of life today.

But the Christian faith, while recognising this reality, points us to another reality. All those who embrace Jesus as the way to God, are adopted into God’s family. We have a new identity, not determined by our childhood or by our peer group or by social media. Whatever our raw material may be, it is not the final story. True, our rough edges remain, our strengths are recognised. We are not yet perfected.

Yet our fundamental identity is that of a child of God. And day by day we need to cut through those other identities we may embrace or have bestowed on us. With the help of the Spirit of God we live not as crippled products of our past, but as beloved children of a loving God.

Blessings,