For Discovering Your Identity in Christ
Have you ever wondered what happened from the time Jesus was on the cross to when He sat down on the throne? More importantly, have you ever fully comprehended what He did for you personally in that span of time? His actions forever defined your identity as a believer—something many people wrestle with today.
For example, Galatians 2:20 tells us, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (NKJV).
Jesus died on our behalf, but this verse shows us that when we made Jesus our Lord, we partook of what He did for us. When He was crucified, spiritually speaking, we were crucified with Him; we died with Him; we were buried and made alive with Him; we were raised up together with Him, and we were seated in heavenly places together with Him.
“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4-6, NKJV).
What’s more, 2 Corinthians 5:17 assures us that “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (KJV).
Becoming A New Creature in Christ
To illustrate the reality of this, Mark and Trina Hankins recently shared with Brother Copeland the testimony of their grandson Dylan who had a bone marrow transplant (stem cell transplant) a few years ago. Dylan’s brother Gavin was his donor. For four days they took blood from Gavin and gave it to Dylan. For the next three months, as Gavin’s stem cells were grafted into Dylan’s, he became a different person. At three weeks, medically in his blood, Dylan was 50% himself, and 50% Gavin. At three months, Dylan was 75% Gavin and only 25% himself. Today, Dylan is 100% Gavin. There’s nothing left of the cells that had leukemia and if you tested both boys’ blood for DNA, they would appear to be the same person.
So imagine what happens spiritually when you make Jesus the Lord of your life? You are transformed to being a new creature in Christ. And think about who your donor is—Jesus Himself! His blood doesn’t flow through your veins literally, but this is what people mean when they say we have Jesus’ blood flowing through our veins. Spiritually, we do! It’s part of our identity in Christ, something we find in God’s Word.
Imagine finding your identity in the Word of God and never wrestling with who you are or why God put you on this earth. Imagine the peace this would bring. It’s possible if we’ll go to God and find our identity in Him. In fact, one of the best ways to discover and study our identity in Christ is to read through Paul’s letters to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians and Colossians; and every time you see two-word phrases such as…
- in Christ.
- in Him.
- in whom.
- in the beloved.
…highlight, circle or underline those phrases, because those two-word phrases describe who you are and what you have as a born-again believer. They describe who He is in us. There are more than 130 such occurrences, though 35 of them are the most significant, and they describe what God has already done for you and in you, in Christ. If you’ll do this, you will discover who you are in Him—and you will discover one of the most powerful ways to develop strong faith. [For more on how to do this, click here.]
Find Yourself in Him
Jesus modeled this for us when He stood up in the synagogue in Nazareth to read. The Scripture says:
And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears (Luke 4:17-21, KJV).
As Gloria Copeland has said, Jesus found Himself in the book! He found Himself in Isaiah 61—and He declared it. When we give voice to who we are in Christ, our identification with Christ is activated by our confession of faith. Declaring what the Word says is equivalent to us saying, “I am agreeing with God that I am who God says I am; I can have what God says I can have; and I can do what God says I can do.”
Be Transformed by Your Identity in Christ
Who better to get into agreement with than God?
Romans 10:9-10 (KJV) shows us “that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
In the same way Jesus found Himself in the book, when we find ourselves in the Book, it will make the Word come alive to us. The spirit of wisdom and revelation will take those two-word phrases from just being information and intellectual knowledge to becoming spiritual power in our lives. The spirit of wisdom and revelation will cause the words to become revelation, and revelation in our lives is transformative. Isn’t being transformed into the image of Christ what we want more than anything?
Kenneth Copeland has said that if you want all the “in Him, in Christ, in whom, etc.” scriptures to come alive for you, then take the “Ephesians 1 Prayer” and pray it every day. The Ephesians 1 Prayer comes from making a declaration of faith based on verses from Ephesians 1:17-23.
Father God,
I’m asking you to give to me the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of You. I pray that the eyes of my understanding would be flooded with light, that I may know the hope of Your calling, what is the riches of the glory of Your inheritance in the saints, what is the exceeding greatness of Your power toward us who believe, according to the working of Your mighty power which You worked in Christ, when You raised Him from the dead and sat Him at Your own right hand in heavenly places, far above all principality, power, might, dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also that which is to come.
For You put all things under His feet, gave Him to be the head over all things to the Church, which is His body the fullness of Him that fills all in all.
In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Embrace Your Identity in Christ
The greatest need we will ever have is the spirit of wisdom and revelation, and according to the Scripture, this is what Paul prayed for the Ephesians—and it’s something we should pray for ourselves.
Paul wrote this to the Colossians as well saying, “For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding” (Colossians 1:9, KJV).
And Proverbs 4:7 tells us, “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.”
Mark Hankins has said that every breakthrough in faith will come from a breakthrough in the spirit of wisdom and revelation. In other words, for your faith to grow and to go forward, there must be a breakthrough in revelation knowledge. And praying the Ephesians 1 prayer daily will unlock that for you.
Do you know who you are in Christ? Do you walk in the confidence He’s given to us? Or do you wrestle with knowing who you are, what God’s called you to do, and why you’re here on this earth? For practical help in discovering such truth in the New Testament, click here for an article showing you how to find your identity in God’s Word today.
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