Following Jesus into Identity
“Who you are in the Father’s eyes, is who you really are…”
One of the greatest gifts that God ever gave us was sending His Son, Jesus, to LIVE for us. You heard me right, I said that God sent His Son to LIVE for us. While it is true, that our redemption, and salvation itself, would be impossible apart from His death, burial and resurrection, there is such beauty in the way that He lived – we must not miss it. While there are aspects of Jesus’s life that feel otherworldly and unattainable, like his sinless nature, He made a clear invitation for us to follow Him in the way that we live our lives, and for me, that following of Him starts in knowing our identity.
From the time that we find Jesus as a boy in the temple, we see Him relating to the world through the lens of identity. When He said that He has been busy about His Father’s business, He was offending the sensibilities of what people would have understood about God. But Jesus saw Himself as a son, and because He knew who his Father was, His sonship changed everything.
Understanding that because of Jesus, we have come to the Father, and have been given the power to become sons and daughters of God, gives us a foundation for our lives. We have been transferred from the Kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the son of His love. This foundation of sonship and identity empowers us to follow Jesus courageously in the way that we live other aspects of our lives.
We can be bold in our love, pure in our intentions, and fearless in our decision making because we are rooted in the love of a good Father. We can live with nothing to prove and only one to please. We can follow Jesus out of a real relationship, instead of trying to check boxes off of a religious list.
As a young pastor, I wanted to follow Jesus and change the world in a way that was ultimately unhealthy. I felt driven to do all the right things, so I could make an impact and change the world for Jesus. My identity was found in my potential, in working my way to the man I was supposed to become. Unknowing, I was suffering from the ‘Messiah Complex’. But then, in God’s kindness, I saw that even Jesus didn’t live under that pressure. He lived His life as a son, doing what He saw the Father do.
Learning to follow Jesus into identity, frees us to live life abiding in the perfect love that We were created for. We were made in His image to be filled with His essence, and understanding our identity, unlocks us to receive from Him, and let His love overflow to those around us, bringing glory to His Name.
He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked. – 1 John 2:6
