Have you ever asked the question: “Who am I?”
This seems to be a question that awaits us from the womb. It is a question of self-identity or the thoughts we believe to be true about ourselves. Self-identity is typically formed through three main influences: our personal experiences, social comparisons, and internalizing the judgments of others.
Though all of these influences can be very powerful in shaping what we believe about ourselves, when we turn to God’s Word, we see that as followers of Christ, we are called to live by a different standard.
The word adoption is used in the New Testament to describe a process of identity transformation that happens when we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior and are transferred into the Kingdom of God (see Colossians 1:13-14). As Paul explains to the new Christians in Ephesus:
“In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship [daughtership] through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”
Ephesians 1:5, insert my own
In Roman culture, the adopted person lost all rights in his or her old family and gained all the rights of a legitimate child in his new family. God uses this metaphor in describing what happens to our identity when we come into his Kingdom. He is signifying an identity shift that is meant to occur. Before we become Christians we are enslaved to a worldly system that determines our value for us. But as adopted daughters our worth is no longer about what we do or where we come from or what we look like. We are adopted into His family and given all the rights, all the privileges of a legitimate child of His family. This means that you and I—we are His!
A lot of times we know this truth in our heads – that we are beloved children of God – but somehow it fails to sink down into our hearts making any tangible difference in our lives. We continue to strive to gain our sense of worth and identity in other things and other people, or we struggle with feeling like our identity is lost or buried beneath the pile of…real life. It is easy to forget who we really are.
Just last week a friend of mine wrote me a message on Facebook expressing this very thing:
“Since having a baby I feel like my life has been turned upside down (mostly in good ways)! And sometimes I get worried that everything I used to dream about for my life everything I used to be about will no longer come to pass. I love being a mom but it’s so easy to let motherhood completely define you.“
What is threatening to completely define you at the moment? Your job or joblessness? Your relationship status? Your looks? Refuse to fall back into the old worth-defining system and choose instead to rest and revel in the truth that we are God’s adopted daughters – chosen, cherished and forever beloved!