Do You Know Who You Are?
There’s a true story told about a hitchhiker in Los Angeles who was trying to get a ride one night when a car pulled over to pick him up. When the hitchhiker got into the car, he saw the driver’s face and recognized him. It was the famous Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas. The hitchhiker looked at Kirk Douglas, and the only words he could muster up were the words, “Do you know who you are?”
Do you know who you are? Well, maybe you’re a Republican, Democrat, or an Independent. Maybe you’re a mom or a dad. You might consider yourself a cancer survivor or a divorce survivor. You might be a business owner, a salesman, a teacher, or a retiree. You could call yourself an American, a patriot, or a taxpayer. Maybe your therapist labeled you with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, bipolar, or depression. You might even say you’re an addict. We wear a lot of hats in this world. Some are very important to us. Some we’d rather not talk about.
As we go about life in this world, we need to remember our true identity.
1 Peter 2:9-10 says, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
I wish I had time to expound on each of these identifiers because each one is packed with so much description. But let me sum it up this way:
Our true identity is that we find purpose within the royal family of God.
If you’re a follower of Jesus Christ, then God has given you purpose in life because you belong to his royal family. God chose us to belong exclusively to his family. And out of his mercy, he makes us holy. He makes us distinctive in this world.
Now it didn’t used to be this way. Paul reminds us in Colossians 1:21-22, “Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds as expressed in your evil actions.”
At one time, we were enemies of God on a path to hell. Then he says, “But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him—”
One of my favorite verses is 1 John 3:1, “See what great love the Father has given us that we should be called God’s children—and we are! …”
So, as we go about our everyday living, there’s a greater cause, and that is our identity. Let’s remember who we are. We are children of God.
We also need to remember our true citizenship.
1 Peter 2:11, “Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul.”
One night, Dawn and I were sitting on the couch watching TV when our then 7-year-old daughter came downstairs from her room with a very important question to ask us. She looked at us and asked, “What are we?” Dawn and I burst out laughing. We weren’t sure where this was going. So, Liv rephrased her question and said, “I mean, where does our family come from?”
It’s important to some of us, isn’t it? We’re curious to know where we came from. I’ve always been curious about my ancestry. So, a few years ago, I spit in a tube and sent it off. How many of you have done that? Well, I checked my ancestry page the other day and found out that I am: 44% German, 40% English or Northwestern European, 12% Scottish, 3% Irish, and 1% Welsh.
While that’s all fascinating to me, where my family came from is not as important as where my citizenship is right now. I’m a citizen of the United States of America. As citizens of the United States, we’ve got a lot of freedom and rights. We’ve got the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and the right to worship God any way we want. We live in a capitalistic society giving us the opportunity to work, to make money, and to spend our money however we want. We have the right to vote on issues, taxes, and who’s gonna lead our country. Having citizenship in this country has its privileges.
But Peter says we’re strangers. The NIV uses the word foreigners. A foreigner is a person not native to or naturalized in the country or jurisdiction under consideration. A foreigner would not have the same full rights as a citizen would have. So, what Peter is saying is that yes, we live here on planet Earth. Yes, we have many rights here. But we don’t have the right to act as the world does. We do have the right to act like children of God.
Peter also calls us exiles. In other words, we’ve been living here for a while, but this is not our permanent home. We really don’t belong here. Paul says in Ephesians 2:19, “So, then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household,” Philippians 3:20 says, “Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
So, we need to remember that we are citizens of Heaven.
Right now, we’re living in enemy territory. Satan and his demonic friends are constantly looking for opportunities to move into our lives and take over. As citizens of Heaven, we must stand united. We must show the world that we are unified in what the grace and mercy of God can do.
In politics today, there is great division. You know that. You see it anytime you turn on the news. It’s a great tragedy to see division and dissension among the people in our country. But a greater tragedy is to see division and dissension in the church because it destroys the eternal cause of Jesus Christ. What must the world think when they see the citizens of Heaven fighting amongst themselves?
Jesus said in John 13:35, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
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Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.