RBV: I John 3:1

I wrote this essay, “Our True Identity,” for the CGG Weekly on October 20, 2023.

“Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!”
—I John 3:1

Once, thinking people searched for answers to the “big questions,” the first of which is “Who am I?” People want to know what they are, how they are unique, and where they fit in the universe’s grand scheme. They want to associate with a movement toward something bigger than themselves that produces rich rewards or a sense of fulfillment. Everyone desires to satisfy his or her innate sense of belonging.

Yet, lately, leaders in society—particularly progressive academics and politicians—have duped both young and old into believing that sexual freedom and fulfillment are the height of human achievement. This perverse idea is patently wrong; historically, it has been declared to be wrong. In fact, until recently, thinking like this has been called an “identity disorder,” a psychological problem. But nowadays, everyone is asked to identify as something, and an increasing number of data forms demand one’s preferred pronouns.

Currently, one’s identity is exclusively centered on and driven by sexuality. Even identifying by race, ethnicity, nationality, and political and religious affiliation has taken a back seat. People identify as gay or lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, transexual, queer, intersex, and many others, including the despised cisgender—those of us who are “normal,” natural males and females. Even when some strangely identify as animals and other non-human things, sexual expression underlies the choice. Many, desiring uniqueness, make up their own identities and sexualities and change them on a whim.

Not very long ago, almost no one thought like this. A few confused individuals had what is today called “gender dysphoria,” but they were rare, and many had various genetic defects that put their natural sex in question. Back then, when babies arrived with both male and female sex organs, the parents, with their doctor’s advice, often decided which sex to choose, and surgery was performed as soon as possible. These poor children, born with two X and one Y chromosomes, were called “hermaphrodites” at the time; now they are called “intersex.”

But what about us, Bible-believing Christians? How do we identify? What is our standard?

The simple answer is that we follow what the Creator God says in the beginning: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness . . ..’ So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:26-27). Here, God reveals the created order of humanity. Four thousand years later, Jesus repeats and thus confirms this fact in Matthew 19:4, asserting it as the baseline of human identity for His people, the church: “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female'[?]”

This subject of identity is not unimportant. In fact, a person’s identity is vital to how he lives his life. Getting our identity wrong leads inexorably to anxiety, foolish ideas, immoral decisions, and the destruction of potential. We need the correct identity to pursue the highest goals toward the most successful life we can imagine.

The underlying problem is that Western society has undermined confidence in the Bible over the last several decades. Most people no longer look to it for answers as their parents’ generation did more readily. Unmoored from its truths, feeling no obligation to conform to its standards, people reach conclusions that suit them and allow them to do what they want rather than what they should. Society has conditioned them to desire sexual freedom, so they declare themselves free to identify as whatever they choose to have the sexual relationships they desire. It comes down to blatant, perverse self-satisfaction.

The apostle Paul explains this idolatrous process of turning from God in Romans 1:18-32. God has revealed enough knowledge of Himself and His way that human beings have no excuse for ignorance of His standards and expectations. Instead, since the Garden of Eden, people have decided right and wrong for themselves and chosen to worship created things rather than the Creator because those things, which they can control, allow them to do what they desire, invariably sinful things. So, God “gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves” (Romans 1:24). He later writes, “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting” (verse 28). The process invariably ends in judgment, destruction, and death.

Under God, our identity is purer and more straightforward, as Genesis 1 and Matthew 19 attest: God created us in His image as male and female human beings. But the more critical part of this description of our identity is “in His image.” Because of the present confusion in our culture, many nominal Christians use the term “image-bearers” to emphasize this idea. Human beings are the physical, created offspring of God, and He made us not only to look like He does, but also to possess many of His attributes. Like Him, we have intellect, language, a sense of time and place, abilities to plan, design, create, build, preserve, and so forth. These allow humans to have dominion over the earth. Why would anyone want to identify as a cat when we are created in the image of the Supreme Being of all the universe?

In the beginning, God split humans into two sexual categories: male and female. He did this to facilitate procreation, certainly, but also to teach oneness or unity through experiences within marriage, which He immediately introduced in Genesis 2:18-24. These early chapters of Genesis establish that, despite living as individuals, each human made in God’s image must learn to function and seek fulfillment in community, which begins in marriage and family and spreads outward toward others. In our case, it should first expand to our brethren in the church and then naturally to friends, neighbors, and coworkers. In this way, we learn that God values both individuality and community in unity. We may see this best in Paul’s comments on unity within the church in Ephesians 4:1-6. This is what living in God’s image is all about because it is how He lives.

But there is more! I John 3:1-2 provides an astounding insight into our identity as God’s elect:

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! . . . Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

It is a mark of God’s love that He has allowed those He has chosen to “identify” as children of God! If we have received His Spirit, we are now children of God physically and spiritually. Under this identity, our destiny is the height of rewarding and fulfilling! As Revelation 21:7 says, “He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be His God and he shall be My son.” We could not imagine or ask for more!

So, we should not let this perverse identity movement have any say in our lives. Our identity is already far more wonderful than some imagined, weird, hypersexualized version of ourselves. God has fashioned us in His likeness, and if He has called and chosen us, we are His select children and heirs (Galatians 4:6-7)! And, as John writes, if we continue to identify and live as God’s children, purifying ourselves to conform to His character image (I John 3:3), we will one day be like Him in glory!