People today are obsessed with identity, probably because they have become cut off from the traditional sources of identity formation, such as family, church, and community. Instead, many people are trying to find their identity in their gender, race, nation, or sexual practices.
Contemporary thought encourages people to define their identity by getting in touch with their victimhood and considering how they are oppressed. This is evident not only in critical race and gender theory, but also in the grievance politics that animates the right as well as the left.
Christians, though, are to find their identity elsewhere. It is astonishing how directly the Scriptures address the preoccupations of our time and put them in their place:
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:27-28)
For the baptized, their identity is found in Christ. Indeed, their identity is Christ, In the previous verse, St. Paul says, “ for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (Galatians 3:26). Christ Jesus is the Son of God. Now those who have faith are sons of God.
This goes into the heart of the Atonement: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). We are cursed for violating God’s law, as the chapter explains. But Christ identified with us, in His incarnation, in bearing our sin, and in “becoming a curse for us” by “hanging on a tree.” So now the promise of eternal blessing made to the Offspring of Abraham–that is, Christ–is the promise to us.
When God sees us, He sees Jesus, because we have “put on Christ.” He sees not our sinfulness but Christ’s righteousness. Christ has our identity, so now we have Christ’s identity. Our identity is no longer based on worldly categories, which were operative then and are still operative now.
“There is neither Jew nor Greek.” Our ethnic, national, cultural, or racial identity no longer applies. Neither to our relationship to God, or, as St. Paul is exhorting, to Christians’ relationships with each other.
“There is neither slave nor free.” Our social status, our economic position, our place in society no longer define our identity. And, importantly to today’s issues, as to the slaves who flocked to the church in the Greco-Roman world, our identity is not to be found in our victimhood and our oppression.
“There is neither male nor female.” We are not to find our identity in sex or gender. Not in feminism or the men’s movement, nor in trying to change our gender or in fixating on our sexual proclivities.
It isn’t that all of these categories don’t exist or are not important. They are part of our physical creation and our social and cultural life. The Bible has much to say about them all. But they are not to be identity-defining.
I suspect that the reason so many Christians today miss the power of this Word of God and are often as confused about their identity as everyone else is that we have neglected and failed to realize the magnitude of baptism.
The ultimate signifier of identity is our name. Each of us has a distinct and individual name, according to which we are distinguished from everyone else. Our parents gave us our name, and, in our culture, our family name–either that of our parents and forebears or of the new family that began with marriage–is part of our individual name.
In the rite of baptism, we are named. That is to say, God names us. He gives us our identity. Yes, parents give the pastor the name that they have picked out for the child, or an adult being baptized formally tells the pastor what his or her name is, but the statement of the baptismal candidate’s name is an important part of the rite. Historically, what a person is named at baptism, as recorded on the baptismal certificate, became the official, legal name. This is why a person’s “first name” has been called the “Christian name,” referring to the name given at the “christening.”
And then, most importantly, the name of God is attached to person’s name. In the rubrics of the Lutheran Service Book, the pastor says this as he pours the water over the candidate:
Name, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
What makes a baptism is not just water but the water plus the name of the Triune God. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).
Yes, all of these other things help make us who we are. Their effacement in baptism does not take away the created or the social orders, even as they apply in the church. This says nothing about vocation, other than the call of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel as given in baptism. Our “ID”cards might record our various secondary identities. But our primary identity, the deepest reaches of the self, our individual essence that will live forever, is to be in Christ.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
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