You Know Who You Are in Christ. Do You Feel It?
We have taken the time to contrast Adam and Christ, and we have seen how we get from Adam into Jesus Christ: condemnation, abomination and alienation in Adam, and justification, sanctification and glorification in Christ. At every point that we were identified in Adam, we are now at every point in contrast, and abundantly so, identified in Jesus Christ.
And yet you might not feel very loved today. You might not feel peace, or joy, or any of the abundance that you possess in Christ. What is all of this for?
Identity Was Never Meant to Stay in the Mind
Essentially anything in regards to identity isn’t simply to stay in the mind as some academic attainment in which you know that someone else might not know. It’s never allowed to be that in the writings. We have to take these things out of their context to have them just be a form of knowledge in which we attain to or we possess. In their context, there’s uses to them. There’s fruit that is derived from it that we are to partake of and to benefit from.
Come with me to Romans 5, and look at how Paul does it.
Peace with God, Rejoicing, and Joy
In verse 1 he says, “therefore being justified by faith.” We have talked about justification in Christ in contrast to condemnation in Adam. And yet in view of that past tense, he says we have. We possess something. He says we have peace with God.
You’re talking about a relationship that was once hostile and once filled with enmity on our part towards God that is now gone away. It’s been dealt with, not because of us, but because of Jesus Christ. In view of Romans chapter 3 and verse 25, the propitiation means that God’s justice has been completely satisfied, not postponed and not simply managed as if it’s going to come out again at one point in time, but truly satisfied. And there’s a fruit that that word is supposed to have within you, connected to your justification: you have peace with God. There is a state of reconciliation now in oneness that you have with God in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
I’m against goosebump theology. Usually what it is is just trying to give you a story and say things eloquently, or have the music playing in the background while you teach a story. But when you have sound doctrine and you have the understanding and the meaning of those words and you receive them by faith, He brings the weight of that upon you and the reality of that within your soul, the bed of your will and emotions. When you believe that and it hits you, that does produce something.
But he doesn’t stop there. In verse 2, “by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand,” and what? “Rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” The issue of rejoicing and joy is in the heart. It’s down in your heart because that’s where He first went to work, and it produced, or it’s supposed to produce, the very things that God says you’re to have. He goes on in verse 3, “and not only so, but we glory in tribulations also.” Again, an inward disposition that sure has an equivalent of outward countenance and demeanor and behavior, but first starts inwardly, from the inside out.
In verse 5, hope maketh not, what? Ashamed. The Word of God, in view of the hope here, is supposed to make us not ashamed. So what is it if, when we learn about this hope, we are being ashamed? Are we believing the hope in the way that it was intended to produce in us? No. We’re not believing God in His things the way that He wants us to believe them. And usually that could be because of shame. We think that He, in view of who I was in the past or in view of what I have done in the present, would not want me rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God. I should be running around with the tail between my legs. But that’s just not what Scripture teaches.
Everything that he is expressing here in regards to His love is to make the case of having glory and rejoicing and joy because of who you are in Christ and what you possess because you’ve been placed in Jesus Christ. In verse 11, “and not only so, but we also joy in God.” Do you joy in God? I’m not saying you get up and you’re dancing all over the place. I think a lot of that is reflective, inwardly. I have a joy in God. I have a contentment between God and I now because of who I am in Christ. And I do have an excitement because of what I possess, even in spite of myself.
These are some of the uses of identity inwardly. For Paul, they are immediately attached to some kind of use, and that use is first and foremost inwardly.
The First Place God Works Is the Inner Man
What do we mean by inwardly? Look at what we don’t mean in Romans 1:24.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts to dishonor their own bodies between themselves. (Romans 1:24)
If those lusts can change to godly lusts, if I can put it that way, to godly affections, then instead of the dishonoring of the body, there would be an honoring of the body between ourselves. But we’re first not talking about the use of the body by word or deed. We’re talking about the use of our identity inwardly, the things of the soul, the spirit, the mind, and the heart, and what it’s designed to produce within you. These are the workings of God uniquely within you in your inward faculties, and that’s what we have God’s Word for: to articulate some of those things that we don’t really know how to express or know, but we can know because of His Word.
Look at Romans 2 and the importance of the heart.
...for he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew which is one inwardly. And circumcision is that of the heart in spirit and not in letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God. (Romans 2:28–29)
Circumcision outwardly is a physical procedure, and it was supposed to be a token sign of the inward disposition of heart. Of not trusting in the heart’s lusts and the heart’s capacities, but rather utilizing the heart to trust in God. When there is a heart of faith, when there is a broken and contrite heart and spirit, there is a circumcised heart. A heart that isn’t trusting on its flesh to produce what God wants to produce.
It is the heart that is supposed to trust in God, and yet it is the heart against God that trusts in self. And so we need the Gospel to set things aright within us and give us clarity on the foolishness and the darkness of our heart. The Gospel comes as a light and it informs the heart and enlightens the understanding. “For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts” (2 Corinthians 4:6). He shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And part of that news was that you come short of that glory. But it is in Christ in which you can be glorified.
Paul prays that the “eyes of your understanding” would be enlightened. They have been in the Gospel, and they continue to be, and as he gives more knowledge, that enlightening takes place first and foremost in the inner man. That is ongoing. “We are the circumcision which worship God in spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:3). The Gospel has set the tone. No flesh is justified by the deeds of the law. No flesh can glory in His presence. Christ needed to be made righteousness, wisdom, sanctification and redemption for us, so that we could glory in Him and not in us.
God Works in the Will, and Christ Dwells in the Heart
This is where God clearly goes to work. “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). The “to will” is part of what we’re looking at in the uses of identity inwardly. The “to do” is next. He works within you what is His good pleasure, and His word is supposed to have its way within you, that you find that His will is pleasing.
When something is pleasing to you and you have affections for it, just like in the contrast, when you have a lust and affection for something, you will go out of the way to do it. The things you love, the things that you have affection for, the things that you will do. And that’s what sin does. It corrupts the whole workings. The working of it is not bad. It’s that sin and lust has taken the working and used it against God. Instead of being filled by God and His Word in your inner man to give you His will, to give you His affections, that then I do that it is not I, but it’s Him within me, and yet I am still doing it. So He first goes to work within us.
This is why Paul gives you the first three chapters of Ephesians, all this wonderful doctrine of Jesus Christ and our identity in Him, and then, as he bridges the gap into the instruction, he wants all of what you understand and know about Jesus Christ to dwell within your heart. It’s like the ocean taking its place within a gallon jug, so that it can be taken and poured out and be used somewhere else. And the more we exercise ourselves to it, it’s no longer the gallon jug that is the flesh that restricts it and just holds it in, but your heart begins to be enlarged. Paul says this in 2 Corinthians 6. The borders and the boundaries of the flesh, and the restrictions that we place on the love of God and who Jesus Christ is and our identity in Christ, that we come along and say, “I’ll go this far, but not this far.” Your heart is able to hold more, that then you’re able to do more.
What’s so amazing about this, because of the nature of faith, is that you don’t need to say, well, when I’m 40, I’ll start doing some more of that stuff. Just believe it now. Just set your affection on things above now. But we always put the obstacles in our own way. I know I do. Paul prays:
I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the Lord Jesus Christ, the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man. (Ephesians 3:14–16)
His focus is your inner man. I don’t think he’s talking here about the indwelling of the Spirit. I think what he’s addressing here is how the Spirit has revealed this information of Jesus Christ, and now he’s praying that you would be strengthened in your inner man that Christ may dwell in your hearts. That this knowledge and understanding that now you’re enlightened with will dwell in your hearts by faith, that you’ll believe it. The measure of Jesus Christ is so vast, and He wants that to be in you. This is how you use it. It’s these things that He’s teaching, you use it by faith.
The Word Works Effectually in Those Who Believe
Paul addresses a group of mature believers in 1 Thessalonians 2. From essentially the get-go, faith, hope and love marked them.
...for this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because when ye received the word of God, which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe. (1 Thessalonians 2:13)
When he came to them and gave them the Gospel of God, they didn’t look at what he was giving them as if it was his word. They looked at it and received it as the word of God, “which effectually worketh also in you that believe.” It worked in them when they believed it at the first. It saved them. The Spirit did the operation of God. And it continues to work.
What would it be if we heard the Gospel for the very first time and we understood we received the forgiveness of our sins, but then after a believer we sinned and there was nothing there? Oh, that truth of what we believed at the first is the truth now and the truth forever. And the same, hopefully, humility and the thrill and the joy and the peace that He gave at the first, when you sin as a believer, you recognize it’s still there. It still effectually works in you that believe.
And so these things don’t have a one-time use. It’s a bounty. It’s a supply. It’s given to you in abundance. It isn’t those words on the page the first time you read it and then you happen to go back and somehow the words have changed. They are what they are. And they effectually work when you believe it. If you don’t believe them, do not expect that they will work.
“But I Don’t Feel This Way”
In my 15 years in ministry, in seeking to help and counsel people to not only understand the Word of God, the thing that I have realized is the most difficult is the thing that the Lord Himself understood was going to be the most difficult. It’s faith. Because faith will take you from your flesh and your ill-gotten and unbiblical and fleshly thoughts about yourself to, I’m a son and daughter of God. I’ve been forgiven all my sins. He loves me, and nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus. I know what I did was wrong because I agree with my God that this is sin. But I know who I am in Christ. That’s where faith will take you.
But you’ll hear, I don’t feel this way. Well, of course you’re not experiencing the joy. You’re not experiencing the peace. You’re not experiencing the fruit of the Word of God and your identity in Christ because you’re not believing Him. And the reality is you only do need the faith of a mustard seed, because the faith of that mustard seed will hang on a word for its life, for its spiritual sustenance. And it will be all that it needs. You love me? You really love me? God commended His love toward me while I was yet a sinner. It will hang on a word. It will hang on words. It will work when you believe it.
You have to forsake your feelings. You have to forsake your thoughts that are not godly. You have to put them off. He will not do that. He’s provided for you an ocean of thoughts for you to think. And if it’s not working within you, there’s either a couple problems. One, you don’t know His thoughts towards you. And usually the reason you don’t know His thoughts towards you is because you forsake the Scriptures, you forsake sound doctrinal sermons. There are podcasts that teach the Word of God now, books upon books. You have the book, which is all you need. But there is no scarcity of sound doctrine. So you’re either forsaking it because we put other things before it, or, I don’t have the attention span. Well, fine, but then don’t expect the fruit of the Spirit.
For me practically, this has come in that repetitive sin where I don’t feel saved. I don’t feel dead to sin. I don’t feel, I don’t feel, I don’t feel. And that allows the authority to be my own thoughts of how God views me instead of the authority of His Word and how He views me. But when you believe that, now you can go somewhere.
Delight in the Law, and the God of Hope
Romans 7:22 says, “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man.” How can he say in one verse that you’re not under the law, and in another delight in it? The law is not the problem. The law was never the problem. The problem is within man. And once you understand that the problem is with you, and you understand that the law’s job is to continue to show that the problem is with you, but that the law does that by showing the righteousness of God, then you can delight in the law of God because you see it’s the righteousness of God. I’m not looking to be under it to produce righteousness in my life, but I can see what it is clearly. Now we recognize in Christ that we have a delight for that which is right, even though we understand that that isn’t the way in which we go to attain it. Where is that delight? It’s after the inward man. It’s not going to use the flesh to attain to that righteousness, but the inward man loves it.
Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing. (Romans 15:13)
How are you going to get filled with not just some joy and some peace, but all joy and all peace? One, you need God. You need the God of hope. You need to learn that hope. When you believe the God of hope, the fruit of the doctrine of hope that God has for you in Christ, He’ll fill you with all joy and peace. If you’re wondering, man, I don’t think I’ve got much joy, and I don’t have peace, go to the God of hope. Learn Him. Study Him. Learn His hope for you. And believe it. Take Him at His word.
Sometimes I’ll read these things, I’ll study these things, and I don’t really know how that’s supposed to produce joy in me. But that’s what He has for me. And usually, if not always, it’s just a matter of time when all of a sudden that does its work in me and I start to see, ah, that’s why. Usually it has to do with when you start to see the contrasts of hope, or future expectation, compared to what our expectation was before. You begin to see what your former relationship with God was, and the peace of this world and how it’s not the peace of God and it’s not peace with God. You see how fleeting and how vain it is. And in that contrast, you compare spiritual things, the peace of the world, with spiritual things, the peace of God. And you begin to believe this and it begins to fill you, and you’ve got joy. And you get peace. But you’ve got to believe, and you’ve got to think on these things. You’ve got to stir them up. You’ve got to remember it.
A lot of that stuff that you might listen through the mediums of podcasts and YouTube, you can get the good stuff in those formats as well. So if that needs to be how to wean you off, use it. But listen, there’s nothing like sitting down with an open Bible and communing with your God. There’s something just pure and sanctified about it. Because of God Himself, because of His words, because of the living words. And what’s the really hard thing is, at least for me, everything I think I need, usually when I go to the Word of God, I realize those aren’t the things that I actually need. And then I have a question in front of me. Do I believe Him or do I believe myself?
Boldness, Fruit, and Strength
In Ephesians 3:12, Paul says, “In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him.” He no longer just says you have access. He says boldness. The humility that you approach God with is that you’re not approaching Him by your faith. You’re approaching Him by what Christ has done. But it’s because of what Christ has done that I approach Him with boldness. I call this a humble confidence. That dwells in the inner man. It might be articulated in the demeanor, it might be articulated in words, it might be articulated in the walk that someone has as they approach the Father. But it all really resides first and foremost in the inner man.
The same is true of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22. “Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such there is no law.” The fruit of the Spirit is first going to take residence within your inner man, and then it will produce the good works that we’ve been created unto. It’s going to produce those things within you as you believe.
And lastly, strength. Paul has a thorn in his flesh, and he seeks the Lord three times for it to depart from him. In verse 9 of 2 Corinthians 12, the Lord responds, “My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Paul doesn’t respond as I sometimes do: You didn’t take it away, you’re just making me strong in the midst of it. Thanks a lot. As if I know best. Instead, I can just receive it as truth, and if my Father is telling me that His grace is sufficient and that this is what He wants to give me and this is what’s best, then that’s what’s best. And then maybe I can learn why.
Paul says, most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. It is in his suffering that this particular power of Christ rests upon him. If it’s taken away, you don’t get to experience this component of your relationship with Christ and with God. “Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake, for when I am weak, then am I strong.” A pleasure, a gladness, a glory in these sufferings because there’s something to avail yourself of. Works in the inner man. There’s a strength that is manifest.
Stir Them Up, Remember Them, and Believe Them
Those are some of the uses of our identity inwardly that we have because of who we are in Christ: peace with God, rejoicing, joy, delight, confidence and boldness, the fruit of the Spirit, and strength. And we ought to stir them up, remember them, and most importantly, believe them. And they’ll go to work in our inner man.
Look Up,
—Josh Strelecki, Pastor-Teacher
This is article nine in the Union in Christ series, based on Lesson 9, The Uses of Identity Inwardly. You can listen to the full lesson here.
Next up: the uses of identity outwardly, and how these things come out in word and deed.