Your Scandalous Identity

If you believe in Jesus then there’s something that seems almost scandalous about your identity.1 There’s something that's too good to be true. Your new identity seems to be, almost as if you’re getting away with something, like robbing a bank or cheating on Wall Street, without any consequences. In reality, your new identity is completely and morally legitimate, even though you are sort of getting away with something.1 This seemingly scandalous something, however, is most often covered up by your inclination towards shame and self-rejection.2 Self-rejection is something you and I both are capable of struggling with on a day-to-day basis.6 The question is: What are we gonna do about it?3

One thing to do is to remind each other about who we really are in the eyes of God.4 If you believe that God lived among us as the person of Jesus, fought and died for you at the hands of the religious leaders, took on all of your sin, rose from the dead, and literally put Himself inside of you, then there is something that has dramatically changed about who you are. What God did for you is that He turned you into someone else. He literally turned you into someone else with a new core, a new inner-being.1 Maybe it might be even better to say that He has turned you into the real you or the person you were always meant to be. The only problem is that on your own, apart from others who can remind you daily about who you really are,4 you’ll fall back into self-rejection which is the main thing that is working against you.2

The reality is that you have been given a new name to reflect the new inner-being that God has put into you. He has literally put Himself into your heart. Therefore, part of your new name includes the prefix “Christ” or “Jesus” or “God” for that matter. If Jose Garcia believes in the romantic and heroic act of God dying for him on the cross, rescuing Him from all sin, and that God has put Himself into Jose, then his new name is “Christ-in-Jose Garcia” or “Jesus-in-Jose-Garcia” or “God-in-Jose-Garcia”.

If you believe that God had the guts to stick it out for you at the cross and to turn you into a new person, then you have a new identity. You have a new name. Your new prefix is "Christ". You are "Christ-in-So-in-So".5 You are no longer just "So-in-So". That person no longer exists.
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1Leadership Catalyst and 2 Corinthians 5:17
2Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved
3Bill Thrall, Sermon
4This idea of affirmation through telling each other who we really are, is most concretely lived out among a small group of men whom I spend time with each week.
5I want to clarify that I'm not saying we are one with God in the same way that Jesus is one with the Father. We are completely distinct and separate from Him, yet He lives inside of us and is working through us. We are interconnected, yet separate somehow. I'm not sure how all this works, but I just want to clarify I'm not talking about anything resembling Pan-theism or that we are able to become gods of some sort. All I know is that our new name is "Christ-in-So-in-So" and that this radically changes everything when we believe this about ourselves.
6I still do. Maybe I struggle with self-rejection less than a couple years ago (I'm adding this in 2011), but it still comes to tempt me. Self-rejection is the opposite of the gospel. The question is What am I going to do with it?