A Case of Mistaken Identity

I am thankful that we serve a merciful God, who has loved us greatly and brought us into fellowship with Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ:
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved ), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 

That is a powerful passage of Scripture, and it gives us a glimpse of who we are in Him - He desires to express through us the surpassing, the extravagant, riches of His grace - we have the Spirit of God within us, we are new creations in Him, and while we don't deserve to have a relationship with Him, out of His great love, He has shared His love and His nature with us...we don't have to be bound by the past, we have a new identity in Him, and as we embrace that new identity, we can experience a greater measure of God's presence in our lives.

In 1st Corinthians 6, Paul contrasts our past lives of living in the flesh with the new life we have in the Spirit:
9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God ? ...  He lists some of the types of sinful behavior that are indicative of life in the flesh, according to our old nature.  11 Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

A Lancaster, Pennsylvania man named Andrew Campbell landed a job at a local candy factory.   He was employed there for 4 days before he was fired - the reason:  a background check showed that he had been convicted of several crimes in the state of Louisiana.

Well, Campbell asked in an interview with a local TV station if he was asleep or sleepwalking when he did all this.   It turns out that there was an Andrew Campbell who is currently in prison serving a 15-year sentence, but a background check pointed to the Pennsylvania man, who has found another job.   Apparently, the background check industry has exploded over the past decade, but there are some companies that are not particularly reliable, and since they don't deal with Social Security numbers (thankfully!), there is a greater margin of error.

So, Andrew is involved in a case of mistaken identity.   And, his former employer tried to tell him who he was...but it wasn't him.   And, as Bart Millard, lead singer of MercyMe, pointed out last night at A Montgomery Familiy Christmas, the church, believers in Christ, are suffering from an identity crisis.   We become defined by a different set of standards than what the Word of God says about us, and if the God of the universe has declared us to be holy and worthy, then that can be incredibly freeing and empowering.

I found an interview with Bart about the subject, which he is quite passionate about, on the Gospel Music Channel website. He related about what God was doing in his life prior to the release of the CD, "The Hurt and the Healer":  “The album was definitely therapeutic. I’ve built a career on being unworthy and talking about how we’re nothing without Christ, which is true; but even though our intentions may be good, I sometimes wonder if Christ isn’t sitting there going, ‘No, you used to not be worthy – you’re worthy now. You’re righteous. You’re holy as I am holy. It’s OK to remember what you were, but let’s move on. Your identity is not your guilt or shame; your identity is in Christ.”

About the song, "You Are I Am", Bart says: “It’s this spirit that’s been throughout the Word and this epic stuff that chooses to live inside of me, and it’s pretty overwhelming to think about...The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives inside of [us], and [we’re] already equipped with everything we need.”

God tells us that we are greatly loved, set free by Christ, declared to be someone special because of what Jesus has done in us, and we can take Him at His word and realize that the God of the universe lives in us.   That has tremendous implications for the way we live our lives.