I am just beginning a series on knowing who we are in Christ. An accurate sense of our self-image or our identity is a critical element in our walk with Christ.  God has gone to great lengths to reveal who we are in his Son and so that knowledge must be essential. The very first thing God reveals about us in his written word is that we are made in the image of God.

As Genesis unfolds, we soon discover that God not only had a burning desire to create a universe but, at least on one planet, he had a desire to create living beings made in his own image. Since God is love (1 Jn.4:8), I believe his very nature prompted him to create man so that he could multiply his expressions of love and receive love as well. A mother’s yearnings to have children must be slightly akin to the yearning that God felt to create us.

I must admit that the idea of being made in the image of God is a bit mind-boggling. Theologians have debated exactly what that means for millennia.  Whatever it means to be made in God’s image, it certainly means that we have enough characteristics in common with the Creator to communicate with him, to give and receive love from him, for his Spirit to take up residence within us, for deity to put on flesh and live as one of us, to think as the Father thinks, and to be called his children and his friends …not his pets.

The Psalmist declared, “What is man that you are mindful of him…you made him just a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” (Ps.8:4-5). Of all creation, including powerful and majestic angels, only man is said to bemade in God’s image. Scripture implies that we have even greater standing in heaven than his awe-inspiring angels. Although we were made a little lower than the heavenly beings, Paul reveals that those of us who are in Christ will actually sit in judgment over angels (I Cor. 6:3).  In addition, the writer of Hebrews tells us that the angels were created to minister to or serve those who will inherit salvation (Heb.1:14). That includes you.

This blog will come out on Christmas Day.  It is a day for reflecting on the amazing truth that God has made us in his own image and, in doing so, values each of us enough to give us the gift of his Son, wrapped in flesh and destined to be a sacrifice. We tend to view Christmas through the lens of Hallmark movies and Christmas cards that depict the nativity as clean, bright, and serene. You know… a peaceful Mary and Joseph with contented cows lowing in the manger and antiseptic, bright sheep bleating in the background.  The shepherds are there along with the three wise men in clean, royal robes looking as they just caught a limo from the Bethlehem Hilton.  Our view of the birth of Jesus is quite sanitized.  As we do that, the cost of God, putting on flesh and being born to a virgin in a small village in Israel is often overlooked.

The cost of his entry into this world began nine months earlier. It began with fearful encounters with angels who had to calm Mary and encourage Joseph.  The birth of the great King began with scandal as this unwed virgin first had to break the news to her fiancé that she was pregnant and later face her family and friends who were “surprised” at how quickly she became pregnant after a hurried wedding.  Joseph’s first response was a plan to divorce her since she had clearly violated her vows with him.  It took the visitation of an angel in a dream to convince him that she might have been telling the truth when she shared her outlandish story of being impregnated by the Holy Spirit. I suspect Joseph questioned his dream from time to time in the following years that they were married. In her ninth month, Joseph was called from Galilee to Bethlehem to register in a census. It seems that things back home must not have been that good for her to feel compelled to take that journey with her husband.  Most probably, the birth of Christ was in Spring rather than the winter since shepherds would not be in the fields at night with their sheep, except in the lambing season of March and April.  Still it was a hard trip and even a dangerous trip for the little couple  nine months pregnant.  There is no evidence that any family members from Nazareth travelled with them, which again suggests that the pregnancy of Mary had not been celebrated back home.  After the birth, they remained in Bethlehem instead of returning to their hometown which again points at a scandal back home that they did not want to try to explain away once more.

The wise men showed up two years after the birth, when they had first seen the “King’s star.”  Mary and Joseph were in a home in Bethlehem by then, not a stable. The wise men’s visit with Herod was not very wise and their audience with him set in motion the death of many innocent Hebrew boys as a result.  Before Herod acted to protect his throne from the threat of this rival king, Joseph was warned in a dream to pull up stakes and disappear into the nation of Egypt.   God had funded the trip with gold, frankincense, and myrrh but they were still a hunted couple on the run in a foreign land where Hebrews were not particularly welcome.  There was more, but I want you to think of the cost of God coming into this world on our behalf… even on the front end. Thirty years later, the ultimate price would be paid for our ransom but this who entry into the world of man came at a great cost to one who had sat on a throne in glory hearing only his praises sung by angles before entering into a world of insult, danger, poverty, and pain.

Jesus not only died for you, but was born for you. Born into scandal he became a political refugee before his second birthday and his parents feared discovery by Herod for years after his birth.  Mary and Joseph did return to Nazareth after their stint in Egypt, but I’m certain that questions still remained about Mary’s pregnancy, the birth of this child, and where they had been for two years.  First century Palestine was not as relaxed about pregnancy outside of marriage as we are.

The only conclusion is that you are of amazing and extreme value in the eyes of God. Made in his image might mean many things, but it certainly means that you have great significance, even greater than the angels themselves. Not only did God make you, but he redeemed you even after we, as a race, had rebelled against the king.  So, this Christmas celebrate Jesus, but also celebrate who you are in him…crowned with glory and honor and made just a little lower than the heavenly beings.

As we begin this series, I want to start fleshing out our identity in Christ by talking more about the importance of identity. As I have said before, there is probably nothing that impacts us more than our identity or our sense of self.  Most of us spend our entire lives trying to determine who we are and whether we really matter – whether our lives really matter.   We are born into this world without a notion of who we are or what we are. We develop ideas about those critical issues mostly from the way others respond to us.

If I am nurtured, loved, celebrated, supported, and valued when I am young, I will grow up believing that I am significant, competent, and worthy of love because I was treated that way. I will expect others to value me because I was valued by my family and I was told over and over that I was significant, capable, and that I belonged. I will be open, confident, and secure in who I am.  Because of that, most people will respond positively to me so my beliefs about myself will be reinforced and my confidence will be a catalyst in doing well in school, sports and career.  I won’t be perfect, but I will have a foundation for believing that I matter and that I have worth.  Because of that, I will be able to give and receive love at a reasonable level and will have some resilience when I am criticized. In short I will believe that if others knew me, they would probably love or appreciate me.  I will also believe that God can love me.

On the other hand, if I am born into an environment of neglect, abuse, criticism, or perfectionism, I will typically feel that there something defective in me that others can’t love.  Why else would the people in my life treat me so badly? I will feel that I can never measure up and I will live with a sense of shame – a sense that there is something unacceptable about me.  I will expect rejection and will often act in ways that invite the rejection I fear.  I may be withdrawn or always critical of others as I try to level the playing field by bringing others down to my level. I may cover up with a false arrogance or bravado and may try to cover up my mistakes by always blaming others for my miscues.  Eventually, my behaviors will push people away and my negative self-image will be reinforced.  Ultimately, I will believe that if people really knew me, they would reject me. I will also doubt that God loves me.

My identity affects my emotional health, my performance, my relationships, and even my spiritual life.  My experience tells me that most of us live on the negative end of the self-esteem continuum and build all kinds of defense mechanisms into our lives to cover our sense of defectiveness. Remember, before sin, Adam and Eve felt no shame and walked in the Garden with God in an intimate relationship while naked.  But after their sin, they tried desperately to hide, cover up, and blame others for their own decision.   To Satan’s delight, shame had crept in. Adam and Eve no longer felt acceptable.  They felt fear for the first time…fear of rejection and fear of punishment.  Our own sense of defectiveness and rejection causes us to do the same things and we pay the price at every level.

Satan loves to reinforce our fear of unworthiness, insignificance, and rejection at every turn. Spirits of condemnation, rejection, and accusation move us to take offense easily at anything that has the slightest aroma of criticism. He tries hard to convince us that even God can’t love us and so we pray with little faith and even less expectation. We see ourselves as messed up and insignificant and cannot see ourselves doing anything great in the kingdom of God.

As a result, believers continue to be angry, depressed, easily offended, fearful, doubting and medicated even after they are saved.  I am convinced that many believers stay that way because they believe they are the same inadequate, broken, insignificant, defective person they always were except they are forgiven. It is not enough to know that we are forgiven, but we need to truly know that we are new creations with an amazing position in the kingdom of God. We will not be transformed until we believe who we are in Christ.  Next week, we will begin to consider who we are in Jesus in detail.  We will begin with the amazing fact that we are made in the image of God.  Blessings.

If you listen to much Christian music and pay attention to the themes, you will have noticed lately, how many songs have risen to the top of the charts that carry the theme ofiIdentityor who we are in Christ.  Hillsong’s Who You Say I Am, Jason Gray’s Remind Me who I Am, Bethel’s No Longer Slaves, etc. are just a few that focus on who the Father has made us to be in Christ.

If you reflect on Christian music through the years, certain themes rise to the surface at different times.  I believe the Holy Spirit directs much of the Christian music that is born in each decade or generation and that music undergirds foundations that need to be laid in believers for his upcoming purposes and events in the world.  Right now, identityis on the front burner. It’s not that it hasn’t always been important.  God has always gone to extreme lengths throughout history to affirm who we are in Jesus as his new creations.  But in this current culture of fading family identity, compromised truths in the church, shifting definitions of gender and marriage, and a heightened war against Christianity, it is especially critical that we know who we are…not as it is defined by self, culture, or government…but by God who operates from eternal truths and values.

David wrote, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Ps.139:13-16).

This Psalm reveals God’s involvement and sovereignty in the lives of individuals.  From the point of conception, God’s hand is upon each person. He creates that individual’s inmost being (his or her temperament, gifts, abilities, etc.) as well as some physical characteristics. Then, he says that every day has been ordained for us and written in his book.  I believe that God ordains opportunities for us which are the good worksprepared in advance for us in Ephesians 2:10. When the opportunity arises, we can still say “yes” or “no” to the moment, but God ordained the opportunity.

Concerning our identity, God has set an identity within us that coincides with the purposes he has ordained for our lives. Biblically, it is not me, culture, government, or science that determines who I should be, but rather God. Knowing who God has made me to be, anchors me in who I am and the call he has placed on my life.  We need to actively be speaking identity over our children, ourselves, and one another in a world where nothing seems certain or absolute any more.

In our Free Indeed ministry, we emphasize identity a great deal and even ask our participants to read out loud a declaration of their identity in Christ at least once a day for 60 days to renew their mind in God’s truth about them.  It is one of the most transformative activations we do in our eight-week series.

Because of the cultural (demonic) assault on our identity in this generation, beginning next week, I want to spend several blogs discussing who we are in Christ, the amazing value he has given each of us, and why it is so important to know that.  I hope you will join me for this important series.

I am part of a church that recognizes the reality of the spiritual realm…both angelic and demonic.  We talk about it, pray about it, and exercise spiritual gifts that touch the unseen realm.  Because of that, I often forget that a large portion of the American and western European church still gives little thought to the reality of the spiritual realm or spiritual warfare. These churches do seem to be comfortable with the idea of angels … especially, guardian angels watching over our children.  However, I wonder how many actually believe in the constant activity of angels or just think of angels in vague ways as a nice sentiment or a comforting thought with little reality behind the notion…kind of like Santa Claus?

In his book, Deliverance from Evil Spirits. Francis MacNutt wrote a chapter entitled, “Do Demons Really Exist?”  Let me quote a little from that chapter.  “Two hundred years ago few Christians questioned whether Satan and the demonic realm were real. Then there would have been no need to write a chapter like this. Even as recently as 1972, Pope Paul VI, reaffirming the age-old understanding of scripture (and human experience) wrote:  ‘It is contrary to the teaching of the Bible or the Church to refuse to recognize the existence of such a reality…or to explain it as a pseudo-reality, a conceptual and fanciful personification of the unknown causes of our misfortunes…’” The Pope would not have written that unless many were trying to write off the teachings of scripture about the kingdom of darkness as mythology and quaint stories told to explain why bad things happen in this world.

MacNutt goes on to say, “As we read through the Gospels, we cannot help but be struck by the extraordinary numbers of references to Jesus confronting Satan and the whole realm of demons. A major theme in the New Testament is the clash between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan. The climax of human history, in fact, occurs when God, in Jesus, overpowers Satan and frees the human race from Satan’s dominion. Nor do I propose that the ministry of deliverance is simply one minor ministry among many that need to be resurrected in today’s Church, but that Jesus’ ministry of deliverance is central to an understanding of the gospel. ‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work’ (1 Jn.3:8).”

Paul clearly states that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces of evil (Eph.6).  He then discusses the necessity of implementing divine weapons in 2 Corinthians 10 because our enemy must be faced in the spiritual realm with spiritual weapons if we are to overcome him.  Currently, the activity of the demonic is raging in America because our national leaders have opened the door for him by declaring evil things got be good and good things to be evil. Many believers are being hammered and are unaware of the source of that oppression and torment,

Charismatic churches are exploding in third world countries because they bring the power of God into the battle against the demonic forces these people recognize and deal with through witch doctors and shamans. It is in the west that Satan has become invisible.  I didn’t say inactive, but invisible. He is invisible because our material, technological culture denies his existence. Many of us have a world view that simply filters out any recognition of his reality or activity. We see the same symptoms in people that were diagnosed as demonic affliction in the Bible, but diagnose them as psychiatric or physiological conditions that can hopefully be managed with medications.  Most Christian counselors will recommend medications for emotional torment but would never suggest deliverance.  The Biblical model demands that we seriously consider both forms of healing when ministering to the illness, torment, and bondage of people.

During the Civil War in America, we are told that more men died from infections than from actual gunshot wounds. The enemy was unseen bacteria. There was little understanding of the cause of infection and the care of wounds, so bacteria thrived and infections went untreated.  What was unseen and unrecognized caused thousands of deaths and amputations.  In the west, Satan seems to operate unseen and unrecognized because we have placed the demonic realm in the category of fiction or superstition.   Satan, then, has free reign to do as he wants as long as he can masquerade as mental illness or some rare physiological condition that is yet to respond to treatment. All the drugs in the world will not expel a demon and so mental health facilities cannot keep up with demand.  I know that Covid is a real thing but I also believe there are spiritual dimensions to Covid that have made the reality much more destructive than it has to be…especially spirits of fear, suicide, depression, distrust, isolation, and so forth.

I am not saying that all depression, suicidal thoughts, gender confusion, rage, violence, and so forth is demonic. But some of it or much of it is or is magnified by demonic spirits.  When Paul said that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual entities and forces of evil, he wasn’t speaking metaphorically.

The western world has enthroned science and “reason” above revelation.  Many Christians have done the same and are even embarrassed to talk about things like demons and supernatural healing as if those are vestiges of some ignorant superstition that used to infect the church.  Many Christians often exhaust all natural healing possibilities before even beginning to pray for healing because they believe more in science than the promises of God.  However, Satan is very real and is still very active. I can’t list all the people we have ministered to over the past twenty years or so that were set free by Jesus in a few minutes while their therapists and medications had only been able to take the edge off their pain, fear, depression, or despair for years. They were delivered because someone believed the Bible and that biblical realities don’t go away as technology advances.

Doctors can help a great deal when the issue is rooted in the natural realm and I am very thankful for the grace if medicine.   But Jesus is the only physician that can provide a cure when the issue is rooted in the spiritual realm.  Wise people will consider both realms when someone needs help and discern where the root lies.  In many cases, both realms will need to be engaged, because all of us are both physical and spiritual and are touched by both realms.  To deny the demonic realm because it makes us uncomfortable or because it doesn’t fit the cultural view of reality is like a person who refuses to get a checkup for cancer because they are afraid of what they might find. In both cases, early diagnosis and treatment is the best approach.  Both cancer and Satan produce devastating results when they go unnoticed and untreated.

The gospel of Jesus Christ will never meet its full potential in the lives of God’s people until his church universally accepts biblical realities and goes to war with an unseen, but very real enemy.  The victory is already ours, but it still must be enforced because demons tend to be non-compliant types who won’t get out just because an eviction notice came in the mail.