Finding Our True Identity in Christ

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Finally my brothers or my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh, for it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus and to put no confidence in the flesh. [00:00:55]

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. [00:01:53]

Not that I've already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus. [00:02:35]

Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things, but our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body. [00:03:28]

But our citizenship is in heaven. As thankful as we should be and as thankful as we are for all the benefits and privileges we enjoy as citizens or at least as residents of the United States, the Bible speaks of a citizenship that transcends all the ties that are earthly, that are geographical, or that are national. [00:06:00]

Do your people know who they are? Does your congregation know who it is? Do they have a sense of identity, and how if asked would they identify themselves? I know that in the 60s it became customary to go in search of ourselves, and people still today talk about looking for themselves and so on. [00:06:46]

When in that phrase he provides us with an indication of our identity, and in that identity a discovery of security, and in that security all of our significance and all of our dignity. We're going to employ those three words in just a moment, but for now let me remind you that Paul is writing from prison in Rome. [00:07:24]

And Philippi is almost like a little Rome. If we had been there, we would have discovered that architecturally it looked like Rome, linguistically it sounded like Rome, culturally its practices were marked by Rome. And Paul recognizes that there is a wonderful analogy in this, insofar as the people who lived in Philippi actually belonged somewhere else. [00:08:06]

Here is the nature of the Christian's identity. Remember classically in 2 Corinthians 5:17, he writes if anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation. And it is this phrase that Paul employs as you read through his letters some one hundred times or more. It is a parallel phrase to that which, for example, we find in chapter two. [00:11:21]

We are all in Adam by nature, but we are only in Christ by faith. You see the significance of identity? You see how easy it is for us to think of ourselves in terms that make us feel okay about ourselves in superficial, transient, passing ways, while failing to recognize the great need that is represented in our lives of being in Christ. [00:17:52]

And you know that if you have come to Christ, because before you were a Christian, whether you were growing up in your home and your parents told you and Jesus died upon the cross for sinners and he lived a perfect life and we were accepted on the basis of his righteousness, we just nodded our heads. [00:18:48]

I am in Christ, therefore I am viewed in one sense by God as being as righteous as Christ, as righteous as Christ, because the only righteousness I have is the righteousness of Christ. It has nothing to do with what I'm doing, everything to do with what He has done. There is no story like it anywhere else except in the Bible. [00:22:11]

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