Identity theft is overtaking the world we live in,
And I’m not talking about credit cards or bank accounts or social security numbers.
The world we live in is dangerously addicted to names. Identification.
It’s about who said it,
Who wears it,
Who sings it,Who likes it,
Who designed it,
Who wrote about it,
Who follows it,
It’s about who.
It’s the name, It’s the identity.
Not too long ago, I was strolling nonchalantly through a prestigious arts and crafts festival a few towns away from where I live.
It’s a pretty big to-do in the area; a variety of crafters gather under several giant white tents to show off their creations and, hopefully, make a few bucks in the process.
One booth in particular caught my eye for a unusual reason.
It was a medium-sized booth filled with silk scarves of different colors and styles, which is no big surprise to find such at an art show, but what caught my eye was a small framed picture displayed in a prominent area in the booth.
The photo was of Hilary Clinton at an event of some kind,
Wearing one of the designer scarves.
Under the photo was a short description about when and where Hilary Clinton wore it.
It wasn’t an advertisement,
It wasn’t a great display of the product,
It wasn’t even that great of a photo.
So, what’s the appeal? It’s Who.
It’s about the name, the identity.
The whole point was to attract people to the idea of buying a scarf.
And what was the attraction?
The fact that Hilary Clinton wore one.
It’s the identity.
It identifies you with someone else.
It may not seem like a big deal.
Most things in life aren’t big, dramatic ordeals that suddenly overpower you; it’s the little stuff that can overtake us.
You can’t see grass grow,
but if you stop mowing the lawn, pretty soon the swing set’s going to disappear,
The garden will be choked out,
The grill will be lost to the world.You didn’t even see it happening, it just sort of crept in.
That’s what happens.
That happens to us every single day of our lives.
We’re constantly bombarded with stuff: people, places, things, thoughts, names.
What’s in, what’s out. What’s hot and what’s not.
All are opinions of others.Pop star,
Movie star,
Singer,
Actor,
Dancer,
Speaker,
Comedian,
Employee,
Democrat,
Republican,
Socialist,
Vegetarian,
Lactose intolerant,Baptist,
Evangelical,
Non-denominational,
Buddhist,
Muslim,
Atheist,
Evolutionist.
Identities, names, labels.
For years and years and years people have used the list above and far more to describe who they are.
There’s a demand in this world for labels, and it can be traced back to a deadly sense of insecurity.
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Jesus already knew why He was on Earth and what His purpose was; That He was literally born to die and save the world from the hell that had been thrown into existence at the fall, in the garden (told in Genesis).
Jesus came to change all that.
That was His will.
His goal.
His purpose and His longing: To save and to heal and to restore and to bring it all back to where it was in the beginning: In Himself.
And in order to accomplish that He had to die on the cross and literally take every wretched thing in existence into himself.
Peter contradicts that.
He tells Him that will “never happen”.
Doubt has just made an unexpected entrance.
Jesus then turns to him and says “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men”
Whoa, Jesus is calling His own disciple Satan?!
…Of course not.
So what’s the deal with that then?
Well, I think we all know that Peter isn’t actually “Satan”, a demonic being donning red tights and intimidating spear, or else Jesus would constantly be calling him “Satan” and why would he tell Peter in the end of Luke that “Satan has asked permission to sift you like wheat” but that He’s prayed for him. Satan can’t sift himself.
In fact, only a few verses earlier Peter tell Jesus that he is “…The Christ, the Son of the Living God” , to which Jesus replies with “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven”
…Very un-satanic.
All the words that are used in the bible that mean “Satan” have extremely similar definitions: “one who withstands, adversary” -(One who causes you to doubt.), to “resist“, and to “oppose”.
To resist and oppose what?
Well, in Peter’s case, to oppose the purpose of God; to resist His will.
It’s literally the resistance and opposition to the mind of Christ.
That being said, Satan can virtually be anything, anyplace and anyone.
Satan is anything that contradicts the grace and truth and perfection of God.
Jesus addresses that in His reply to Peter.
In the original Greek-to-English text Jesus says “Go behind me Satan you are an offense to me for you do not think the things of God but the things of men.”
He’s addressing a mindset: a mindset that thinks not “the things of God but the things of men”.
Jesus’ point doesn’t end there,
He pointedly tells all the disciples that “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it”
Deny Himself.Take up His Cross.
Follow.
Himself.
Meaning you.
“Self” has no room for anyone but you.
And so, Jesus tells his disciples to “deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.”
Deny it.
Say ‘no’ to it.
Loose it.
Ditch it.
Let go of it.
Let go of “himself”.
Let go of self. Let go of all the bondage and baggage that’s behind the word “self”.
Because the “self” so many of us were and still are clinging to is literally “dead”, as Paul writes in Ephesians 2:
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
Paul is describing the nature and mindset of man after the fall in the garden: “dead in…transgressions and sins”, “following the ways of this world”.
But then, we were “made…alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions“ and “it is by grace we have been saved”
Paul is describing who we were, and who we are.
We were “dead in your transgressions and sins”
We are “made…alive with Christ”…even when we were still dead. It wasn’t anything we did, but what He did through His unfathomable grace and mercy and indescribable love.
So Paul is giving us two separate descriptions of two separate identities:
One which is “dead”,
And the other “made alive in Christ”.
And again, Paul says “All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.”
He’s talking about “himself”, not himself as in Paul, but who we all were. himself, herself, ourselves, yourself. It’s about who.
“Self” is “dead”.
That’s why Jesus, immediately after address Peter’s outburst, tells his disciples to stop clinging to “self”, because “self” leads to death.
Deny it.
He then says (from original text) “For whoever may desire to save his soul will loose it but whoever may loose his soul for my sake will find it.”
Let’s look at the meaning of the word “soul” in our own language: “The spiritual or immaterial part of a human being, regarded as immortal; A person's moral or emotional nature or sense of identity.”
So, “whoever may desire to save His soul-” his own sense of identity “-will loose it”Have you ever built a lopsided snowman? Where you, without realizing it, make the base foundation snowball smaller than the ones stacked on top of it?
It looks pretty good when it’s finished; nothing obviously amiss, but the next morning all that remains is the snowy rubble and odds and ends used for the face.
It couldn’t stand because what you built it all upon was a small, weak, inadequate foundation.
Many of us build our lives on too-small snowballs.
We try so hard to hold ourselves together, and to identify ourselves and to keep that sense of identity intact and healthy and appearing good, that we forget about the actual foundation itself.
No matter how hard we try, we will never be content with ourselves.
Because we don’t actually know who we are.
Because we are surrounded by a throbbing world of labels, and we’re told that this is the foundation of who we are: Your career is who you are and your status is who you are and how you feel is who you are and where you live and where you come from and what you like and who you follow and how you look and what you do is who you are.
It’s all about you.
That’s what the world tells us.
That’s why labels are everywhere.
Because there is an unquenchable longing in this world to know who we really are.
Jesus tells us to deny ourselves,
Deny that sense of self identity.
Jesus invites us to stop building our lives on a crumbling snowball of “self”.
“but whoever may loose his soul for my sake will find it”.
When you loose the labels and the names and your self identity-your soul, you will discover your real, true and beautiful identity that Jesus Christ shed every ounce of His blood and died to give you.
In John 14, Jesus is having one of His last conversations with His disciples before His death, and he tells them “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”
Just as Jesus is one with the Father,
We are one with Him, and He is one with us.
We are in Him,
And He is in us.
This is our one, true identity: Jesus Christ.
This truth declares that it doesn’t matter where you come from or how gloomy your past is or how you think your future looks, because Jesus took our place at the cross and bore our grief’s and carried away our sorrows so that we can have real, true, eternal, beautiful, everlasting life! Not in and of our selves-in and of our own souls, our own identities,-but in and of our new beautiful, whole, prosperous, full, pressed-down, shaken-together and running-over identities in Him who fills all and all!
We were literally “born again” through His death and resurrection! And we didn’t even have to say a prayer, or confess our sins; because as Paul writes “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions“
Even when we were dead.
Even when we were still completely lost and confused and bewildered and overwhelmed by the fallen system which we’d created, God was there making us alive in Him.
He presented us with our new identity even while we were still trying to understand our old one.
“It is”- completely and entirely and doubtlessly and as sure as the sun rises in the east that - “by grace we have been saved”
Jesus is inviting us, and urging us to let go, lose and to stop clinging to the old identity, and to open our eyes to the new one that‘s already inside of us.
In Matthew 4, Jesus is walking along the shore line of the Sea of Galilee and he sees two brothers, Peter and Andrew, fishing, and the scripture adds “for they were fishermen”, and Jesus smiles and calls them over, saying: “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men”, essentially, Jesus is telling them that there’s something far greater than they can ever possibly imagine waiting for them right on the other side of those fishing nets. He’s telling them there’s more than the career label that’s been stamped across their foreheads, there’s more than the simple identity they’ve been handed and it all starts with “follow me”.
Their response: “leaving the nets they immediately followed Him.”
You can bet that wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment whim; Peter and Andrew were born into this world just like you and I; they had dreams and hungers and aspirations just like you and I and they were searching for something more than what the world was endeavoring to force upon them. Just like you and I.
They had literally waited their whole lives for those two words: “follow me”.
Those words aren’t just for Peter and Andrew,
The Bible is literally held together with those two words.
Those words are for you,
And for me,
And for the noisy neighbors,
And for the gossipy co-workers,
And for the friends you wish lived closer,And for every single living breathing thing upon the face of the universe.
“Follow Me”It’s for all.
Jesus walks further, the two new disciples undoubtedly in tow, and he comes upon another set of brothers: James and John, who are immediately identified as the “Sons of Zebedee”, which isn’t unusual, for in countless areas of the bible people are identified by who their father is. They’re with their father mending their nets.
Mending nets.
How many times have you mended your net, simply to find it crumbling in another place you hadn’t noticed before?
Jesus called them and without hesitation, they immediately left their boat and their father and followed Him.They left their boat; their career, their livelihood, their job, their label,
And their father; their identity… and literally chased their new one.
You’re in a boat.
I’m in a boat.Everyone’s in a boat,
And we’re all mending our broken, torn, crumbling nets, with our gloomy identity breathing down our neck every step of the way.
Jesus is on the shore
Smiling,
Waving,
And calling us over,
Urging us to awake from the dead slumber of our selves, of our own identity and to open our eyes wide to the new identity which already surrounds us and fills us and burns within us waiting and longing and praying to be let out and to take action and transform our minds and our lives and the whole entire universe.
It’s time to discover your true identity.It’s time to know who you really are.
It’s time to step out of the boat.
“Follow Me”.
