Identity

This is the final post in our 8-part series on our Identity in Christ. First, we looked at a few of the false identities men tend to latch onto: Social Groups, Hobbies, and Romantic Relationships. We then shifted gears to look at Who God Says You Are: You are a Saint who has been adopted as a Child of God. Today, we wrap things up by looking at what all this has to do with pornography addiction.

How Does Understanding My Identity Help Me Overcome Porn?

Imagine you are walking down a crowded street and everywhere you look you see people scowling back at you. All you hear are whispers of accusation and condemnation. Not only that, but every alley you walk by is lined with scantily clad beauties offering you illicit affairs and promising you an escape from the noise of the crowd.

Photo credit: SpirosK Photography

Picture this scene while thinking to yourself, I am a sinner. I’m worthless. Nobody loves me. I am a slave to my sin.

How do you respond to the accusations? How do you respond to the sexual temptation? You will desperately want to retreat from the fear and pain caused by the verbal assaults of the crowd. When you hear the offer of love and acceptance from the alleys, it will be nearly impossible to resist its pull. You know it’s sin to give in, but you already feel like a failure, so what’s one more mistake going to matter? By viewing yourself as a sinner, you have resigned yourself to the fact that you will eventually give in, just as you always do.

Now, picture the same scene again, but this time, think to yourself: I am in Christ and He is in me. I am a child of God. I am a saint. Sin has no power over me.

I am in Christ and He is in me. I am a child of God.
I am a saint. Sin has no power over me.

Is your response any different now? I am willing to bet it is. When you view yourself this way, it becomes much easier for you to ignore the condemning voices because you know the things they are saying about you are no longer true. When you understand how much you are loved and accepted by God, you won’t feel the need to receive love and acceptance from the illicit back-alley opportunities. When you understand your true identity, it puts your eyes back onto God, His love, and what He says is true about you. It allows you to walk in His power rather than your own.

Understanding you true identity as “in Christ” will help you maintain a proper perspective. And in the same way this perspective empowers you to resist the temptations in the previous illustration, it will also empower you to resist the temptations you encounter in real life.

“My Name is Stephen, and I’m a Sex Addict”

I believe 12-step programs have helped countless people learn how to manage their behavior and live improved lives. For that reason, I am grateful that they exist and support them fully. That being said, I think there is one area where they are falling short of their full potential.

Standard 12-step programs will encourage you to identify yourself as an addict regardless of how long you have been sober. Yes, you may find freedom from the behavior of your addiction, but you remain shackled to your identity as an addict. As the saying goes: “Once an addict, always an addict.”

Christ offers you a new identity, though. Because of His freedom, you are no longer a slave to sin, which means you no longer need to identify yourself as an addict. In fact, your addiction can’t define you anymore, because it’s dead. It was crucified with Christ along with the rest of your sin.

This is why the gospel message is not about learning how to merely cope with or manage your negative behaviors; it’s about being reborn into a reality where your sin has been put to death once and for all.

That, my friend, is true freedom from addiction!

So let me ask you again, who are you?

Are you a sinner? Are you an addict? Not anymore, my friend!

If you have put your hope in Christ, you are a child of God! You are a saint! You are dead to sin!

Try to remind yourself of these truths every day. It’s amazing the difference they will make in your life—and in your journey to freedom from pornography.

Define yourself radically as one beloved by God.
This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.
―Brennan Manning—

This post has been adapted from my new book,
10 Lies Men Believe About Porn, available in Spring of 2014.

For more information, or to sign up for updates, please visit the
Belt of Truth Bookstore.

Today we enter into the home stretch of this 8-part series on our Identity in Christ. First, we looked at a few of the false identities men tend to latch onto: Social Groups, Hobbies, and Romantic Relationships. We then shifted gears to look at how God defines us: We are “in Christ” and we are “Saints.”

Be sure to subscribe to our blog using the links in the sidebar so you don’t miss out on the conclusion of this series.

You Are a Child of God

You know what’s absolutely amazing? The God of the universe, Creator of Earth, the One who holds everything together, has adopted you as His child. But don’t just take my word for it:

To all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God
(John 1:12).

All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God (Romans 8:14).

You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26).

Think about that for a second and just try to comprehend what it means. If you’re a parent, consider how much you love your kids. As much as you love them, though, it’s with an imperfect, human love. God loves you even more than you love your kids, because He loves you with His holy, unconditional, and righteous God-love.

Jesus tells us an amazing story of God the Father’s love in the parable of the lost son (Luke 15:11–32). In the story, a rebellious son demands his inheritance from his father immediately. Culturally, this was the same as telling his father, “You’re dead to me now.” But rather than yelling at his son or punishing him, the father gives his son the money, lets him leave, and waits in anticipation for his return. Every day the father looks off into the distance, hoping to see his son returning. When the son finally does return, the father doesn’t even give his boy a chance to grovel. He runs to him with open arms and tackle-hugs him at full speed! No matter how much the boy rejected or disobeyed His dad, there was nothing he could have done to make his father stop loving him.

Return of the Prodigal Son, Rembrandt

Do you realize this is actually a story about God’s love for you? No matter how much you’ve messed up, He will always be standing there with His arms wide open—just like the father in the story—waiting for you to come home to Him. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or where you’ve been. None of it will make any difference in how much He loves you.

No matter how much you’ve messed up,
God will always be standing there
with His arms wide open
waiting for you to come home to Him.

I didn’t understand the depth of a love like this until my daughter was born. I can say without a doubt that there is nothing my girl could ever do to make me stop loving her. No matter how many times she hits me as a toddler, yells at me as a teenager, or disowns me as an adult, I will always be there waiting for her with open arms. I simply cannot fathom living my life apart from my favorite little girl no matter what she does. Honestly. I’m even getting a bit choked up now just typing these words and thinking about how much I love her. But as much as she means to me as my daughter, you mean even more to God as His adopted son.

You Have Full Access to God

As a child of God, you have full access to God whenever you want. You can come before God and ask Him to help you with our struggles, give you His strength to make it through a difficult circumstance, or give you His wisdom in a specific situation. You can come before Him and ask Him anything, because you have full access:

All of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us (Ephesians 2:18).

Not only that, the Father actually wants us to come before Him with our needs and desires. He honestly cares about whatever is on your mind:

Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you (1 Peter 5:7).

Think of it this way. How hard is it to be granted an audience with the president of the United States? Apparently, there isn’t even a clear path laid out for the average citizen to meet the president. The closest I could find was a page on the presidential website allowing you to enter your name into a drawing and hopefully win an invitation to a dinner with him—but it expired four years ago. That leaves me the option of performing some amazing act of heroism that will gain me national attention, or winning the Super Bowl (I think those guys usually get a White House invitation).

But what if the president was my dad? Do the president’s kids need to enter a contest to win dinner with their daddy? No way. They can walk into the Oval Office and hang out with him pretty much whenever they want. As a child of God, you’ve got that same level of access to Him.

Trusting that you have Christ living inside of you, that you are a saint, and that you have full access to God as His adopted son will free you from needing to strive to measure up or attain perfection in your own power. You can rest in the knowledge that you are accepted and loved exactly as you are, because you are family. Likewise, the things of this world—success, failure, riches, fame—suddenly seem insignificant compared to your position as a child of God. This becomes the biggest thing in your life.

It becomes your identity.

As one of my favorite authors, John Lynch, puts it:

He lives in you! You are in Him! How much closer do you want to be than that? Every moment of every day, fused with you, there He is. He never moves. Never covers His ears when you sin, never puts up a newspaper, never turns His back. He’s not over on the other side of your sin, waiting for you to get it together so you can finally be close. It’s incredible! Don’t you think? That’s why they call it “Good News!”

Come back next week for Part 8: How Does Understanding My Identity Help Me with Porn?

This post has been adapted from my new book,
10 Lies Men Believe About Porn, available now.

For more information, or to sign up for updates, please visit the
Belt of Truth Bookstore.

In the past few weeks we’ve looked at a few False Identities men are prone to latch onto such as Social Groups, Hobbies, and Romantic Relationships. We then shifted gears to look at Who God Says You Are, which is the only place you can find your true identity. Please subscribe using the links in the sidebar to be sure you don’t miss out on the remainder of this series.

You Are No Longer a Sinner, You are a Saint

Would you believe me if I told you anyone who is in Christ is no longer a sinner? What if God told you it was true? The truth is, He has told you just that:

You also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11).

When Christ took all of your sin upon Himself on the cross, He destroyed its power over you. Because of this, your previous identity of “sinner” died along with Christ:

My old self [sinner] has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20).

Now that the power of sin over me has been broken, I can trust that Christ living within me will empower me to live the life He has called me to. But not only that, I can also trust Him when He says that I am truly dead to sin. Which means I am no longer a sinner—I am a saint!

In the same way that you cannot be both “in Adam” and “in Christ,” you cannot be both a saint and a sinner. You are one or the other. In order to reconcile this with what feels like a very different reality—we all still sin—we need to look at it a bit deeper.

First, what is the definition of a sinner? One who sins, right? Nope. A sinner is one who can do nothing but sin. See the difference? If you are still separated from Christ, everything you do, no matter how noble or good it is, is done apart from Him. And anything done apart from Christ is sin. If you are in Him, though, you now have the ability to do good things “in Christ”—things that are not sin. Likewise, a saint is not someone who never sins, but someone who doesn’t have to sin. Sin has lost its power over you. You are not a sinner who has been saved, but a saint who sometimes gives in to sin.

We see this being played out with Paul as he shares his own continuing struggle with sin:

I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me (Romans 7:18–23).

Sounds familiar, right? This same battle played out in my mind every time I gave in to porn. Why do I keep doing this if I’m supposedly dead to sin? Paul can’t really be “dead to sin” if he’s writing this, can he? Well, let’s look closer. Paul clearly states in this passage that he loves God’s law with all his heart. We also know he is a follower of Christ at this point by reading the rest of the letter, so it’s clear that he is “in Christ.” Therefore, he must also be dead to sin. But why does he still struggle? The key to understanding this seeming contradiction is to notice a few easily overlooked phrases.

First: “I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.” Did you catch that? Sin is doing these actions within Paul. Not Paul. Paul is a saint—dead to sin and alive to Christ. This sin does not define him, but it still influences him. It has no ability to change his standing in Christ, but it can still wreak havoc in his life.

This sin within us is commonly referred to as “the flesh” throughout the New Testament. The flesh is not us; it is a false self—a lie. At the end of our life here on Earth, it will die, but the real you will continue to exist. That is why Paul says it is not really he who is sinning but the flesh within him. His true identity—who he really is—is completely separate from this sin within him. It does not define him.

Second: “There is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.” Something else is inside of Paul. Something that is not Paul. The power he is referring to here is the devil and all of his minions, who are constantly trying to convince you that your sin does define you. They are trying to get you to lose sight of the reality that you are dead to sin. These powers are waging a war within Paul’s mind (and our minds as well) by whispering lies and accusations in an attempt to lure him back into the bondage of sin.

As one who is “in Christ,” though, you are no longer a slave to sin. But if you believe Satan’s lie that you still are a slave, you will continue to live as if his accusation is true. As long as you still believe your identity is “sinner,” you will believe that you have no choice but to give in to sin whenever temptation comes. If, however, you believe that you are a saint, you will trust the Word of God when it says that sin is no longer your master. And once you chose to trust the Word, you can begin to live in the truth it declares.

Come back next week for Part 7: You Are a Child of God

This post has been adapted from my new book,
10 Lies Men Believe About Porn, available now.

For more information, or to sign up for updates, please visit the
Belt of Truth Bookstore.

In the past few weeks we’ve looked at a few false identities men are prone to latch onto such as Social Groups, Hobbies, and Romantic Relationships. This week, we will shift gears and take a look at who God says you are, which is your true identity. Please subscribe using the links in the sidebar to be sure you don’t miss out on the remainder of this series.

Who God Says You Are

As far as God is concerned, there are only two possible identities for every man, woman, and child alive today. You are either “in Adam,” or you are “in Christ.” You must be one or the other, and you cannot be both. The most important thing to understand in regards to your identity—and ultimately in your battle against temptation—is which camp you belong to.

You are no longer “in Adam”

The moment Adam chose to turn away from God and share the fruit with his wife, the cancer of sin entered into the human race and changed the default identity of everyone (See Genesis 3). Since that day, every one of us have been born physically alive but spiritually dead:

When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned (Romans 5:12).

Our identity at birth is now “in Adam,” which means we are all born with a sin nature.

Adam and Eve by Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto

If you are a parent, it shouldn’t be too hard to understand this. Unless your name is Mary, your sweet little kiddo didn’t need to be taught how to sin. It’s in their nature from day one to be selfish, to lie to you, to yell “NO!” when asked to do something they don’t want to do. Did you ever sit down and have a conversation with junior discussing the benefits of dishonesty and how manipulation can be used for his gain? Of course not. Any child knows these things because they are born with a sin nature.

As long as your identity is still “in Adam,” you are separated from God because of this sin nature within you. You are spiritually dead. If this is your reality, the lie of this chapter is unfortunately true for you—your sin really does define you. You can do all sorts of good things here on earth, but ultimately none of them will matter in eternity because they will be done for your own benefit and not for God’s glory. You are also forced to live your life, fight your temptations, and manage your pain using your own power. You are on your own. This does not mean God is not actively pursuing you while you remain “in Adam” (He certainly is), but ultimately you will need to reach out to Him and accept His help.

Don’t be discouraged by this, though. If you are reading this book, there’s a good chance your identity is no longer “in Adam.” Why? Because the moment you placed your hope and trust in Jesus, your identity switched to “in Christ,” and the separation no longer describes you! Satan will still try to convince you that even though you have placed your hope in Jesus (in Christ), you are still defined by your sin (in Adam). But remember, you are either “in Adam” or “in Christ.” It’s fully one or fully the other. You cannot be both.

You are “in Christ”

Just as everyone is born “in Adam,” everyone is also given the opportunity to be born again “in Christ.” The moment you place your hope and trust in Jesus to rescue you and set you free from your sinful nature, you are reborn with a new nature—a new identity. Your identity is now “in Christ.”

Chances are, you have a pretty good understanding that being “in Christ” means you are now reconciled to God. Even if you haven’t spent much time in church, you’re probably still familiar with John 3:16:

God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

When we believe in Christ, we receive eternal life in heaven with God. Most churches do a wonderful job of preaching this central truth of salvation. What is sometimes missed, though, is the truth that this life “in Christ” is available to us right now! If we understand the gospel as merely the promise of eternal life after death, we remain stuck trying to live life here on earth in our own power—living as if we are still “in Adam.” We miss the reality that God has promised us His life (and all the benefits that come with it) today. It begins the moment our identity changes from “in Adam” to “in Christ.”

Jesus Washing Peters Feet by Ford Madox Brown

Let’s take a look at what Jesus teaches us about what it means to be in Him:

Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:5).

This verse is a great positional statement showing us what happens when we live with an understanding that our true identity is in Christ: We will produce much fruit. We will receive His power in us to live the life He has for us. We will see all the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—flow from our lives (Galatians 5:22–23).

But what happens if we don’t understand that we are “in Christ”? We will live our lives as if we are a disconnected branch and will quickly become discouraged by our inability to produce fruit by ourselves.

How many of you, like me, read this verse a hundred times thinking, I don’t see much fruit in my life…does this mean I’m not really connected to Christ? Thoughts such as those are precisely what comes when you do not realize that, once your identity is “in Christ,” it will never revert to “in Adam.” As long as you are questioning the security of your identity in Christ, you will live as if you are still partially “in Adam.” You will attempt to produce fruit on your own in order to confirm your own salvation. But it will never work, because you can only produce fruit if you are living out of your true identity in Christ. That’s because fruit isn’t the proof of being in Christ; it is the product of being in Christ.

Perhaps this will be easier to understand if we back up a few verses and see what else Jesus says in this passage:

You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me (John 15:2–4).

Did you catch that? You have already been pruned and purified through Jesus. The reason you may be experiencing a season of unfruitfulness is not because you were cut off or never attached, it is because you have believed the lie that you are not now attached to Christ. You are believing that something, usually sin, has separated you from Him. Simply put, you were not remaining in Him.

Furthermore, you may have been striving to produce fruit in your own power in an attempt to prove that you really were in Him. But the key to living in your true identity isn’t to try to become who you think God wants you to be; it’s to trust that you already are who God says you are. If you trust that Christ is really in you, and you really are in Christ, fruit will flow naturally. Like most truths in Scripture, though, you must choose to believe this first in order fully experience it.

Come back next week for Part 6: You Are No Longer a Sinner, You are a Saint

This post has been adapted from my new book,
10 Lies Men Believe About Porn, available now.

For more information, or to sign up for updates, please visit the
Belt of Truth Bookstore.