Identity, Purpose and Direction

Gospel of John #8

In John 3:31 we read Jesus words, “The one who comes from above is above all.”

Last week we discussed the importance of reclaiming our spiritual heritage. We are from God and of God. Our right mind is our spiritual mind, the mind of Christ. In order to know who we are, we must experience the second birth to counter the curse of Adam’s sin. We must be born anew, born again, born from above. That is where we get our identity from. Jesus gives us contrasting ideas in verse 31 for further clarification. “The one who is from the earth belongs to the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all.” Our first identity is from the earth, but God gives us a new identity. Nicodemus just didn't get it. He was too earthbound in his interpretations. "How can a man enter his mother's womb and be born a second time?" Jesus marveled, "Wow! You are a master of divinity and yet are missing this entirely. Do not wonder that I say you must be reborn into your spiritual identity, lost in Adam, your oneness with God.

Abram’s natural human heredity, his identity is well documented in Genesis 11:27-31. He is the son of Terah. His family consists of his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, who he was charged to raise as result of his brother Haran. He was born in Ur of the Chaldees, a city in what is now the modern nation of Iraq. The family then settled in Harran, in what is now Syria, but at that time was not quite in Paddan Aram or Hittani. It was “in between.” It gave Abram what Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, founder of the NAACP and Crisis Magazine referred to as “double-consciousness.”

We read in Deuteronomy 26:4 concerning Abram, “a wandering Aramean was my father.” Geographically and culturally this is a bit of an overstatement, probably due to the fact that Aramaic became the lingua franca of the commercial world, which included that small nation on the Levant known as ancient Israel.

He could have equally been called a Hittite (present day Turkey), since Harran was geographically in the old Hittite Empire. The point here is that while he was born in Ur, he was raised in the kingdom of Paddan Aram which is the modern nation of Syria, and this gave him a double-consciousness.” It is that which has enabled Black American Africans to be loyal to the USA, but not “blindly loyal.” The two-ness, this otherness which is the outcome of having our culture, language and religion violently and suddenly stripped away from us, leaves us with a collective unconscious of otherness, so that we are not “stuck in America and with Americanism" the way so many blindly patriotic people are. We have that “something else” that informs a more “humane consciousness” regarding cultural and social criticism, American foreign policy, human rights issues and so on.

I believe God had Terah move his family to Harran because God wanted it to be easy for Abram to obey Him when he called him away from his country, his people, his culture, his earthly identity. John Wesley taught the doctrine of prevenient or “preventing grace,” whereby God prepares us for God and God's will and way in our lives by the active work of God’s Spirit in our lives. God, our of intense love, enables to say “Yes” for our good--which is always God's goal for every human being.

God does not force us, but God’s motive toward us is unconditional, intense and intimate love. God desires to be in relationship with us at all costs. God prepares us for His expectations, his plan. Just as we know that God never tempts us, tests us, beyond what we are able to bear, so God never calls us to do something without making it possible for us to say yes. And God prepares us by birthing us anew, renewing our relationship to God as sons and daughters of light, children of God, heirs to all of God’s promises. It is all of God and by God.

Like Abraham, we are socialized into the sin of Adam, into the lust for things and money and approval and position and power, for familial, ethnic and national loyalties—all the things that are unspiritual, contrary to our God nature and draw us away from God and seeing all people as the family of God, united by our One Spirit.

In Genesis Chapter 12, God says to Abraham, “I’m calling you to leave that identity behind. Go from your country—go from your people. Then God says this—even as you are surrendering your people, your country, your heritage, your upbringing, I will make you a great nation. I will make you a new people. I will give you a new name. God promises Abraham a new identity. Jesus said, from the earth: old identity; from above-from God: new identity. Jesus also said in John 3, “For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God.” He and she is given God’s Spirit, God’s mind, God’s wisdom, God’s intellect without measure.

Why, then, has God so blessed those who are born of God? Why is God determined to bless Abram and make his name great (Abraham=father of a multitude? Why does God insist that Abram be a different kind of person than his father, his brothers, his family and his people? Because Jesus said in verse 35, “The Father loves the son and has placed everything in his hands.” This is God’s purpose in having us reclaim our spiritual selves, reclaim our heritage as children of light, and to remake us in the image of the Christ. God is placing everything in our hands.

God’s purpose for humankind was to rule over the earth, to tend and cultivate it, to govern it, to bring order and beauty to it. By surrendering to disobedience we lost our birthright, but now, through Christ we have been born anew. Our identity is “child of God, child of the King.” We are in the poetry of Songs of Solomon, "God’s beloved-God's lover." God desires us as one desires the ultimate intimacy of a lover. Why are we to be responsible for all things? Because like Abraham and children of his promise, our purpose in life is to be a blessing. We have the power to make things new, to make things happen in accordance with God’s direction. This is what Jesus modeled, lived, died and rose for. God said to Abram, “through you shall all nations of the earth be blessed.”

God has designed the plan of salvation, not only to save us, but to save the planet itself, to save humankind, by recreating his life in us, that we might be a blessing to others. This is our purpose—to agitate for a new world, to witness to God’s life. Through us, the spiritual power, the power of God's mind and purpose is released through our prayers, our actions, our praises and our devotion to God. Ultimately we will send Satan to the Lake of Fire which is his destiny and we will also send those angelic messengers (demons=messages, ideas, ideologies, plans contrary to the Word) who serve him with him.

We are to exercise our authority as heirs of God through Christ in us, to free the earth and its people from the shackles of "the Prince of the Power of the air." In order to be successful warriors for God, we must forever keep our new identity in front of us, and through confession and ongoing repentance let the old identity go.

Finally there is the issue of direction. Jesus said, “Whoever believes on the son has eternal life.” Whoever is guided by, trusts in, adheres to, and relies upon the Christ has life to give to others. We are to take up God’s work. That is our purpose. But in order to do this, we must be directed by God.

In Genesis 12:4, we read, Abram went as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him.” Lot was not invited by God to go, but even in his act of obedience to God’s call to go, Lot was converted. Lot was blessed by Abram’s obedience, and many will be convinced by our obedience of faith.

Abram did as the Lord told him. Abram set out for the land of Canaan. He did not know what to expect there. Other people were already there. It didn’t make any difference to Abram how different, how unusual it seemed. God was directing him. In verse 7, Yahweh appears to Abram and says, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So there Abram built an altar to the Lord. Abram went from there and pitched his tent in the hills. There was nowhere else to settle in the plain. Lot chose one of the already established cities of the plain, the unfortunate city of Sodom.

Nevertheless, Abram knew that what God was calling him to do required a new city, a new society, a new human reality and identity. What did Abram do when he set up his homestead, “He built an altar and called on the name of the Lord.” When we have the eternal life of Jesus, we are participating in the life, the plan of God. We are ever-moving forward toward a fuller and more complete life in Christ Jesus. Eternal life is ours because we now have the mind of Christ, because we have the righteousness of Christ, and because we live in the love of Christ. Christ is all in all. A faith that surrenders all to the will of Christ finds its purpose in that will.

And so our identity is: “the beloved of God, heirs to the promise of God, to the promise of Abraham to God, sons and daughters of God our king.” Our purpose is: “to be a blessing to others, to the world, because God in Christ has ‘placed all things in our hands’ until ‘Christ comes in final victory and we all feast at the heavenly banquet.’” Our direction is to be directed by God, in all things and all times.

May the Love of God our savior fill you with His Mind (Spirit of the Christ) that the world will witness "Christ in you, the hope of glory!