Personal Matters
Contemporary Western society is more confused about matters of identity than any that has gone before. I see many feminised young males, every form of sexuality has been legitimised, trans-genderism is fully accepted and the push for gay marriage is relentless. I believe this unexpected series on identity is a sign of the love of God for the most lost generation in human history. The climax of the series necessarily involves Jesus’ sense of who he is; his own sense of personal identity. Even though such matters are beyond the powers of normal human comprehension healing for our time can only come from sharing in Jesus’ oneness with God. At the centre of Christ’s relationship with the Father is what it meant for him to know himself as the Messiah of Israel.
The Promised One
Other human beings have a sense of their identity before they know of God’s promises, but Jesus’ very existence is constituted by the covenantal promises of God. At every step of his life a promise is fulfilled: conception, “a virgin shall conceive” (Isa 7:14= Matt 1:23), deliverance from enemies, “out of Israel I have called my son” (Hos 11:1= Matt 2:15); anointing for ministry, “the Spirit of the sovereign LORD is upon me” (Isa 61:1 = Luke 4:18) etc. The intimate title “Son of God” pronounced by the Father at Jesus’ baptism is primarily a messianic term (Ex 4:22; Ps 2:7 =Luke 3:22). In knowing himself as the fulfiller of promise Jesus is constantly filled with an enormous sense of privilege in his Father’s tender presence. He knows himself to be the fulfilment of Israel as the favoured firstborn, the apple of God’s eye (Ex 4:22-23; Deut 32:10). The ministry and miracles of Jesus were a testimony to him of the climax of all God’s covenant promises coming to pass in and through himself to Israel as God’s chosen (Ps 135:4). Jesus knows who he is by seeing all the messianic promises fulfilled through his own life story (2 Cor 1:20).
Who Do Men Say that I am?
The identity of Jesus is at the centre of God’s sphere of blessing and revealed only to his closest companions. His question to the disciples, ““Who do men say that I am?”” (Mark 8:27), provided an opportunity for divine inspiration. Peter replied, ““You are the Christ.”” (Mark 8:29). Jesus recognised the favour of God upon Peter, ““Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”” (Matthew 16:17 ESV). The rare public occasion where Jesus confessed his full identity is intensely revelatory about his own self-understanding. “the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?”But he remained silent…Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”(Mark 14:60-62 ESV cf. Mark 7:36; 8:30; 9:9). The identity of Jesus is that he is one who receives all the blessings of the Father. Jesus is blessed to be a blessing through fulfilling all the promises of God. But there is another side to the Word of God.
A New Identity
The Law prescribes curses for those who break it (Deut 27-28), the climax of these covenantal threats is total disinheritance, ““And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance.””(Deuteronomy 21:22-23 ESV). The identity of old Israel as a rebel and idolater must be put to death so a new Israel may arise. Jesus brings this about “by becoming a curse for us – for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”” (Gal 3:13). At his point of total dereliction Jesus becomes the conscience of ever Israelite who is guilty of breaking the Law; “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34; Rom 3:20; 2 Cor 5:21). Though of Jewish flesh and blood he is so alienated from the chosen family of God that his status becomes one of an unholy Gentile sinner (Heb 13:12). The impact of such covenantal dissociation on Christ’s identity is unparalleled. As the sacrificial substitute for idolatrous Israel Jesus must be separated from all the promised blessings of God to Israel, including the promises of a coming Messiah. Questions like, “Am I really an adopted child?”, or, “Am I a woman trapped in a man’s body?” are profound in depth. But humanity’s ultimate identity crisis is, “Am I the Christ, the Son of the Blessed”?, or most drastically, “Am I ‘I AM WHO I AM’? Nothing less than such a radical almost blasphemous interpretation of the cross can heal the identity confusions of our time.
The resurrection is the final revelation to Jesus’ conscience of what it means to be the Messiah of Israel and Saviour of the world. Paul climaxes his account of the destiny of Israel as the people of God’s promise like this, “They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.” (Romans 9:4-5 ESV). This means that a particular Jewish human being Jesus of Nazareth is as Blessed as the Blessed One.
Blessed in the Blessed
The greatest identity confusion dealt with in the New Testament is not idol worship nor sexual anarchy but the division between Jew and Gentile. At the heart of this fracture in human identity is the blindness and hardening of the vast majority of Jewish people concerning Jesus as their Messiah and Lord (Acts 2:36; Rom 9-11). Paul feels this fracture so sharply that he wishes to be “accursed” as evidence to his people of the truth of the gospel of Jesus as the Christ (Rom 9:1-3). That Jesus is “the Son of the Blessed” to be identified and worshipped as the Blessed God himself is the way to healing all our ignorance’s and confusions about who we are as human beings . The truth of human identity is found in these words, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,” (Eph 1:3 cf. Rom 15:29).
Jew and Gentile
The question of the relation of Jew and Gentile is not to be relegated to some marginal note concerning the status of a small political entity in the Middle East. Biblically this is a question of the identity of God as a keeper of promises ! As the Lord spoke to my heart we must, “Rotate the image”. The image/mirror in which God sees his glory as a Father through the redeeming work of Christ is an image of Jew and Gentile one in love; “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,” (Ephesians 3:14-15 ESV). Jews cannot understand themselves without seeing the gentiles as one with them in Messiah Jesus, and the same is true for us gentiles. Together we share in all the blessings that God has ever promised to his people (Rom 15:8-12, 27; Gal 3:14). Jesus is blessed to bring Jew and Gentile together to the heart of God as Father as one in love, peace and familyhood (Eph 2:11-22). The re-union of Jew and Gentile in himself is an overwhelming source of blessing to Jesus and an essential element of “the mystery of Christ”, the unveiled secret of how Jesus knows who he is (Eph 3:1-6).
Conclusion
The true and final identity of every human being is to share in the fully realised identity of Jesus; our identity is in Christ as “the blessed ones” of God (Matt 5:2-12). In Christ we are located at the centre and fullness of all beatitude -sharing in God’s own eternally blessed life (1 Tim 1:11). The saving knowledge of such immeasurable riches (Eph 2:7; 3:8; 4:13) are however vitally dependent upon the living revelation of the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile in Jesus as Messiah and Lord. In the plan of God such Christian unity forms a sort of End-times mirror in which Christ beholds the fullness of the grace and wisdom of the Father’s plan and the world sees the final destiny of the oneness of all things. When this happens globally “all Israel will be saved” Jesus will come for his Bride the dead will rise in Christ and we will finally and fully know exactly who we are (Rom 11:15, 26; 1 Cor 13:12).