Introduction

The topic of identity is one of the deepest of all, and operates at every conceivable level of human existence, personal, social, sexual, familial, cultural, national and religious. In contrast to contemporary thought[1], the Bible sees identity as a gift; it is something that you must ultimately be given from God. Our travels through the Middle East raised the question of identity very sharply in a religious context. The normal expectation is for religious practice to be highly public, privatised religion is, rightly, seen to be a sign of shame.

If you are in a taxi with a Moslem there is nothing strange to see prayer beads and a prayer mat in plain view, or in the taxi of a Christian, to see a prominent crucifix. It is impossible to avoid the 5 Islamic hours of daily prayer each day broadcast through the loudspeakers of countless mosques. Folk who get down on their prayer mats on the street seeking God have no sense of self consciousness. Totally unexpectedly, we ended up in the Festival of Mar Girgis (St George) outside Luxor in central Egypt, where thousands of Coptic Christians gathered to celebrate, sing, dance, be tattooed with religious images and sacrifice animals. This very intense experience was an unmistakeable manifestation of cultural and religious identity. Similarly with Judaism, once you hit the Old City of Jerusalem the presence of Orthodox Jews with their characteristic dress, beards, ringlets etc. is overwhelming[2]. The piety displayed at the Western/Wailing Wall is completely unapologetic. Yet these diverse celebrations of religious identity are mutually incompatible.

Practising Jews, Muslims, and Christians have many religious convictions in common – there is only one Creator God, God has spoken through a long line of prophets, there will be a future resurrection, Day of Judgement and heaven and hell. In detail however the doctrines are not identical and create constant stresses. The Muslims we spoke to on the streets of Cairo were quite welcoming to us as Christians, but said they would not extend the same friendliness to Jews. We heard through a missionary how a Coptic priest asked the government authorities to shut down a bible study because some attendees were Orthodox but the leader was a Protestant. Quite unconsciously, a local Evangelical pastor in Bethlehem stated that there were many thousands of “traditional Christians” in the town, but only about ten percent of these were “believers”.

Identity issues run very deep. Our YWAM host in Jordan was chatting with us about a conversation he had recently with some local pastors. When he asked how would they respond to a Muslim Background Believer joining their flock they said such a person would be welcomed openly, then they went on to remark that such a person could “never be a leader or a pastor” because they could never be trusted. A few days later we were with our host in Jerusalem, a Hebrew speaking South African who had been in Israel for about 20 years. He shared that at one stage when he asked a Messianic pastor about joining their fellowship he was told that he would be fully welcomed, but that he needed to know that he could never become a leader because a “Gentile could never understands the Jewish heart.”

These are shocking things to hear, but they are not restricted to foreign lands. I am totally convinced that the Lord wants to do something about our sense of identity in Australia. A revelation of the mystery of identity at the deepest level begins with the relationship between Jesus and his Father.

Inheritance is From the Father

Judaism, Islam and Christianity all affirm the oneness of God as their core belief. Yet the understanding of this oneness is radically different between the three religions and goes to the very core of what it means to be human. Being in some sense Abrahamic in origin, each of the three great monotheistic faiths grasps that in some way the fatherly blessing upon a son holds the key to identity. I will use Islam as an illustration of this insight and speak of Judaism later.

When we were trying to cross from Jordan to Israel by land, we were told that the border was closed because it was the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha. This commemorates the willingness of Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his son Isma’il (Ishmael) as an act of obedience to God, before God intervened to provide him with a ram to sacrifice instead. In the Old Testament of course, it is not Ishmael, but Isaac who is offered. This is very important, for Arabs believe that their tribes, including the tribe of Mohammed, are descendant from Ishmael, Abraham’s first born son. Such issues of identity run very deep, even for Arab converts to Jesus.

Whilst in Jerusalem our host showed us a DVD about Muslim conversions to “Christianity”. One of the more memorable moments came when a middle aged Arab convert described how he wept when he heard these words in the Bible, ““As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation.”” (Gen 17:20). The Father’s blessing is absolutely essential to establishing identity.

When we were at the baptismal site of Jesus an articulate young Moslem engaged me in conversation, quoting a verse from the Koran denying that God can have a Son, “he is one god, Allah the eternal, the uncaused cause of all being. he begets not, and neither is he begotten.” (Sura 112:2-3 cf. 10:68-70; 18:4-5; 19:88-9) Since Allah can have no son, Islam, which means “submission”, cannot require filial submission. The “Great God” of Islam can never experience the intimate heart joy that comes from having an obedient son. This is why Islam must essentially be a religion external to God’s own life and Allah can in no way be identified with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There are many passages in the New Testament that expound the nature of the unity of God as a plural oneness in whose mutual blessings it is possible to share. Paul proclaims, “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, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” (Eph 1:3-6). God the Father has chosen to include us in his relationship with Jesus so that we share in the blessedness of Christ’s sonship[3].

In an earlier study I spoke of the submission of Christ’s sacrifice[4] as the most beautiful thing that has ever been experienced by the Father. In the Father’s heart for his Son Jesus[5] there can no wrath and so no confusion about identity. This is the heart he shares with us by the gift of his Word and Spirit[6]. When the Father pours himself out in his Son and Spirit we know that we are the most blessed of all people possible and we deeply enter into the identity that Jesus possessed so powerful from his baptism on that he was the Son of the Father’s pleasure. Identity confusion resolves itself in the love of the Father.

The difference between Christianity and Islam is fairly easy to explain, but our relation with the Jewish people is much more complex.

The Identity of Lost Israel

I have long held ambivalent views about the existence of the state of Israel, so was particularly attentive to the voice of God as we crossed the land border between Jordan and Israel. The following scripture entered my awareness very clearly ““Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.” (Isa 49:15) This passage highlights two deep realities about God’s relationship with the Jewish people, firstly, they are his sons, and secondly, he cannot forget them[7].

Paul teaches categorically about the Israelites, “to them belong the adoption” (Rom 9:4) i.e. sonship. Is this sonship the same as ours, is it covenantal, or is it merely due to their fleshly descent from Abraham? In prayer I sensed the Lord say that the Jewish people are the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son. The Gentile Christians are like the younger brother, who though he went far away from the father has returned repentant and chastised. The older son has the natural blessing but because of the hardness of his heart, legalism and resentment, remains outside of the circle of the father’s embrace.

My spiritual sense is there is over Israel, both as a land and a people, a “spirit of separation”. This is the same spirit that Jesus confronted 2,000 years ago. In his time the Pharisees held pride of place and the people of the land were considered their spiritually inferiors. Further out were the gentiles, unclean, idolatrous, “dogs”. In Israel today the same hierarchical perception of spirituality remains- ultra Orthodox, Orthodox, Reformed, Liberal and finally secular Jews. Messianic Jews are looked down upon as outside, they are at times physically persecuted by Orthodox Jews. This sort of separatism is not kept within the Jewish family. All the Arab Christians we spoke to, both within the West Bank and elsewhere, expressed their desire to fellowship with Jewish believers in Jesus but described how this met widespread resistance.

The umbrella organisation for the unity of Evangelical churches and ministries in Israel is the United Christian Council[8]. We were privileged to meet with their national director who handed us one of their publications[9]. Within it there is a note on the absence of Messianic Christianity within the network, “the Messianic Movement…feels the need to establish their own identity [i.e. apart from fellowship with Gentile believers] as Jews who choose to believe in Jesus as their Messiah”. Sadly, the spirit of separatism runs very deep, even within the family of God.

I remember standing on a hill overlooking the border wall separating Israel from the Palestinian Territories and that winds across the hills to the horizon. Whatever else the wall means; it signifies a deep division between Jew and Gentile. The key to understanding the depths of all these divisions is surely the holocaust.

We spent half a day at Yad Vashem, the holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. There is a striking emphasis at the beginning and end of the exhibits on the lengthy ambivalence of Christianity to Jews. The church is presented as a supporter of hostility to the Jewish people from the time of Augustine through the Middle Ages, then with a focus on Luther’s profound anti-Semitism and the failure of Pope Pius XII he speak out against Nazi genocide policies. Pointedly,the memorial outlines how the Allies chose not to bomb the railway lines and other transport hubs into the concentration camps even when they knew what was happening there, because such action was not a military priority.

Leaving Yad Vashem you are left with a strong and emphatic sense that the Jewish people believe they must do whatever is needed to ensure their survival and if necessary do it alone. This is the result of a terrible and unresolved racial trauma. There is only one way this anguish can be healed; it requires an eschatological manifestation of sonship. The final revelation of the identity of the sons of God – Jew, Arab, Australian…must be an end time manifestation of Jesus Christ.

Identity is Eschatological

Hebrews, a book very much concerned with covenant, starts like this, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things” (Heb 1:1-2). This means that Jesus is the final revealer of sonship. From his baptism on the course of his life is an immersion in the Spirit which marks him out as the blessed and only Son of the Father’s pleasure. The coming of Jesus marks the beginning of the end-times and brings about a radical transformation in the meaning of God’s covenant with humanity. With the coming of Jesus, all the elements of the old covenant mark a relationship with God ONLY as they point to and share in the fully realised identity of Christ. There is no saving covenant between God and his people outside of Jesus as the Servant of the LORD (Isa 49:8 cf. Luke 22:20; 1 Tim 2:5). Orthodox Judaism completely fails to understand these realities.

Adjacent to the Western/Wailing wall is a plaque that reads, “The presence of God continually abides in the temple”. This is accompanied by an explanation of why pious Jews won’t go on the temple mount, lest they walk on the site of the holy of holies where the glory of God dwelt. There is however nothing especially holy about this part of Jerusalem, for Jesus is the new eschatological temple of God (John 2:21) where his glory abides forever (John 1:14). To seek a place of glory outside of Christ is in this age a clear sign of shame (Rom 3:23). Yet, in relation to the people of Israel things are never that simple. Whilst today there can be no such a thing as The Holy Land, the Jewish people who were called and set apart by God’s sovereign choice do, in this sense, remain holy[10], even when they refuse to recognise their ruler has come. Their deep identity confusion can only be healed in Jesus as Lord and Messiah (Acts 2:36) who died and rose again for us all.

In the language of the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus is our brother who on the cross went into a far off and sin-filled country outside the care of his Father. Now, by resurrection and ascension he has returned to the fullness of the Father’s love and opened the way up for us all, Jew and Gentile alike, to come to his Father as one family.

When Jesus cries from the cross, ““My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34), the identity struggles of the world laid upon him have stripped Jesus of the consciousness of sonship. When he is “declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom 1:4), his eschatological identity as Son is perfected. From now on he is completely and uninterruptedly in relationship with God as his Father, it is this awareness which he communicates to us by his Spirit. The Spirit who took him to the cross (Heb 9:14) and raised him from the dead (Rom 8:11) witnesses to us that whatever our race, class or gender we share as sons of God the same identity and belong to the one family (Rom 8:16; Gal 4:6). By preaching Jesus’ death and resurrection we call the members of the human race to find their final identity in Christ. The prophetic destiny of Israel is no different. The Jewish people can only come to their true identity through betrothal to Jesus as their eschatological Bridegroom and Husband. [11].

Israel’s Ultimate Blessing

By the time we arrived in Israel we were committed to follow a route involving sites of divine blessing through the land. One of these was the Sea of Galilee. In the unexpected arrangements of God, someone booked accommodation for us at a place called Beit Bracha, which in English means “House of Blessing” which is at Migdal just south of Capernaum.

The first morning we were there I climbed to a hilltop overlooking the Sea of Galilee and was meditating on, “Galilee of the nations”, an expression that leads into an important messianic prophecy, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.” (Isa 9:2; cf. Matt 4:15-16). The theme that Israel was chosen to be a “hub of the nations” radiating the light of God into the earth echoes throughout scripture[12]. This is a prophetic destiny fulfilled in her Messiah, who is proclaimed to be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”” (Luke 2:32). Israel’s end time vocation cannot be separated from that of Jesus; her glory is to reveal God to the nations through the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus CHRIST. Israel’s pre-eminent prophetic purpose has always been to serve the nations of the world in the image of her Lord (Mark 10:45).

For this to be achieved will require a massive reversal of the mindset that presently dominates Jewish thinking. For the Jewish people/race/land/church to be prophets/priests/kings to the world requires nothing less than a repentance of the very foundations upon which the modern state of Israel was formed. This is a huge challenge to the survival mentality of modern Zionism, not only amongst the Jews, but also in many of its contemporary Christian forms. This can never happen without a fuller revelation of the identity of Jesus.

At the beginning of Romans 9, Paul lists all the privileges of the Israelites and climaxes this with one of the most profound statements concerning Jesus in the New Testament that speaks to us all, “from their race…according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.” The true identity of Israel and all humanity is found only in union with Jesus as Christ and Son of God who is eternally blessed in communion with his Father. Jesus came into the world to communicate the endless blessings of his Father[13]. The final meaning of identity is found in the communication of the glory of our Father in heaven and in no other place[14].

Conclusion

This series on the blessings of the Father has come full circle, for the framework for realising the blessing of identity is not found by looking inward to our emotions or gifts, nor by looking backward to race or family ties, but is a part of the kingdom of God. Conclusive identity comes from a sense of God the Father’s identification with us, conveyed through the ultimate gift of his Son (Rom 8:32) given in the power of the Spirit. To know these things is to have life eternal. Through being born of the Word and Spirit for the purposes of entering his kingdom (John 3:5-8; 1 Pet 1:23), the children of God cross into a zone of blessing that excludes all possibility of being dishonoured by the goal of our faith – the Father of Jesus will never be ashamed to be our God (Heb 2:11; 11:16). Such a shameless sense of identity releases confidence, witness and unity amongst the people of God.

It is through a deeper revelation of our identity that the church in Perth will be drawn into the blessing of being a “hub of the nations”. Not primarily a hub to which the nations are drawn[15], but a hub for taking the gospel of the kingdom to all nations, that Christ might come again for us all (Matt 24:14). The Lord is working to a great plan. Humanity is growing through technology, common youth culture, trade and the fear of global warming etc. into a consciousness of our planetary connectedness. Simultaneously, a worldwide move of God is being prepared on the foundation of a united global Christian witness, from a church that moves in one unified identity[16]. Of this we are all blessed to be a part.