Convinced

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

 

    As it applies to your identity, “Christian” is not an adjective. I just wanted to get that straight from the beginning.

     Back to middle school Language Arts class: an adjective describes a characteristic of the thing named; it is not the thing itself. “A red ________” – a red what? A red bell pepper or a red Corvette? It’s important to know because you don’t want a Corvette to show up in the tossed salad. Do you see why nouns have to be given priority? And did you notice that “adjective,” as it’s used in this paragraph, is a noun itself? Without the noun there wouldn’t even be a chance of having words to describe other nouns. 

     The good writing coaches will recommend you find a better noun, not a bunch of adjectives to paste onto a weak one. “Rock,” you may say or write, while “granite” does ten times the describing with the same word count. You convey color and texture, maybe even the idea of costliness: granite is often used for monuments; sandstone not so much. The right noun is unbeatable.

     As it applies to your identity, “Christian” is the noun, the word we have for what IS, the word that puts language to reality. When “Christian” gets demoted to adjective, reality slips away.

    “I’m a Christian student”; “I’m a Christian mom”; “I’m a Christian firefighter.” All could be true, but the plainer reality is you’re a Christian who is a student, mom, and/or firefighter. It would be terribly awkward to say, but reality would be even better served if you said, “I’m a firefighting Christian,” or “I’m a mom-ing Christian.” I hope you can see the difference: you’re not who you are because of what you do; you do what you do because of who you are.

     Last week I wrote to encourage us all to brush up on our testimonies – those stories of how Jesus got a-hold of us – primarily to glorify God, but also to help convince others that they, too, can have new life in Christ. This week I’m writing to the hardest of all to convince: you and me.

     Salvation is forever, a fact inscribed in heaven. Jesus came “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10), and he doesn’t un-save us. With salvation comes a brand new identity: child of God (John 1:12), the righteousness of God (2Corinthians 5:21), citizen of heaven (Philippians 3:20), friend of Christ (John 15:15), saint (Ephesians 1:1). In short, you are in Christ (Romans 6:11, plus about 47 other New Testament places). You’d think, with such a preponderance of evidence, we’d have a firm handle on our identity in Christ. For the few who do, I’m glad. For all the rest of us… well, read on.

     We’ve started the Bible book of Daniel in our reading plan, and with Ezekiel and Jeremiah already under our belts, the Babylonian captivity of the Jews is becoming familiar. Those who were carried off from Jerusalem could be known by a couple terms: Jewish exiles or exiled Jews. The same, you say? Not at all. There’s a night-and-day difference, determined by which word gets to be the adjective and which one gets to be the noun. There were exiles who happened to be Jews, and they acted just as anyone else who is marginalized and oppressed. Conversely, Daniel and his young companions, as exiled Jews, acted as people chosen by God for his own inheritance – who happened to be exiled in Babylon. By understanding their identity, Daniel was able to refuse the king’s unclean food and wine (Chapter 1) and interpret the king’s dream (Chapter 2), and his friends were able to withstand the king’s fury (Chapter 3). 

     The concept of identity is in desperate need of redemption in our time. Adjectives have been given far too much authority. The common practice is to take a weak, generic noun and hang adjectives on it like ornaments, with a handful of adverbs to modify the weaker adjectives. Shortly, nobody remembers the noun, including the one whose identity was being described. I’ve seen Christians fall for it; I’ve fallen for it myself. For the Christian, redeeming the concept of identity begins with setting “Christian” in its proper place as a noun – the language for the thing itself.

     The toughest audience for your testimony sits in the space between your ears. Same for me. For some reason, identity in Christ is hard to keep a grip on – as if it’s too good to be true. But God, when he saved us, crafted an identity for each and all of us that is Christ-like right now, and the only way in which the identity changes is that it becomes ever more conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29). What might you do, what peace and confidence might you know, if that truth lived steadily in the space between your ears, silencing every heckler?

     Get a grip on your identity – the real and lasting one – and hold fast. Talk to the Father about it; he’s the one who crafted it. Talk to Jesus about it; he’s the one whose image you’re being conformed to. And one last thing: at some point, if it’s at all possible, go and thank your middle school Language Arts teacher.

 

 

Grace and Peace (to convince you of your own testimony),

 

John