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Tag Archives: Identity

The Good

17 Saturday Dec 2022

Posted by memoirandremains in Identity, Romans

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good, Identity, Romans 8:28

We are hardwired to search out the good. History proves that. History also proves we seem to have no idea what the “good” might be.

            We disagree with one another as to what the good might be. Our self today disagrees with our former self about the identity of the good. We form governments which seek impose a vision of the common good upon us all.

            We even war about the good. The Romans were quite certain the good entailed Romans ruling over everyone in the world. Everyone in the world was not always in agreement. The German tribes were certain they should rule the Romans. And so lifetimes were spent brawling over the nature of the good, as each sought to kill the other in the name of the good.

            The giants of human thought provided us their insight into the good. Aristotle began his treatise ethics with the observation: “Every art and every investigation, and likewise every practical pursuit or undertaking, seems to aim at some good: hence it has been well said that the Good is That at which all things aim.” (Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Edited by Jeffrey Henderson, Translated by H. Rackham, Revised edition, vol. XIX, Harvard University Press, 1934, p. 3.) All things aim at the good.

            He then must spend page upon page seeking to ascertain the good that everything is trying to achieve. One would think that if anyone could solve that problem for everyone at all times, then it would be someone like Aristotle. But not even Aristotle (nor any philosopher since) was able to provide an answer for which everyone could say, “Yes, that is the good.”

            We are like children sent out into the world with a compulsion to come home with the good, while having no idea what the good actually is. We must have it, but we can’t identify it.

            What a strange thing the “good” must be. We must have it. We can’t identify it, however we try. We cannot live without it. It is a matter of life and death. We will kill to have it, and kill to make others see it our way. It something upon which we cannot agree. The desire is common to all human beings always. The solution is not.

            The good is like a Blackhole. A massive, invisible beast which directs the actions of all things about it, and yet itself is never seen.

            When we come to Romans 8:38, we just as lost. Perhaps the most common misuse is to tell some who has just lost her job, “all things for good. You’ll get a better job.” But she does not get a better job. Instead, she gets cancer. So she concludes the promise was a lie.

            Our trouble comes with that slippery word “good.”

            One reason we cannot find the good is that we define the good in a circle. I want the good. What I wants is good. Therefore, whatever I want is good.  It is good because I want it.

            Such thinking would not have trapped Aristotle. But even Aristotle could not reason his way to “good.” While he could not think about the “good” without knowing something of the desire for the good; he could not find the good.

            The reason even Aristotle has failed is that the good is not here. It is not apart of this age, this world. The good is so elusive, because the good is further away from us than even the furthest star. One could travel – if one could live long enough – to the furthest star. But no one could travel to the good.

            The good belongs to who and what we are. We were made for a very different place. We were created for Eden’s Garden and direct fellowship with God. We were created in God’s image, to re-present that God in this creation. But we now live in a world under a curse. Augustine famously said we are looking for a happy life in the land of death. The good is not here.

            What a sad thing to be a human being, possessed of an unquenched desire for that we can never obtain.

            If that is so, then how can Paul promise the good? Because a way to the truest good, the most profound god, the end for which we are created is opened upon here. To use the sloppy tropes of science fiction, a portal to another dimension has been opened.

            The good is that we will be made fit for the world to come. The perishable cannot inherit the imperishable. (1 Cor. 15:50) We must be made fit to receive that inheritance. We must be change to reflect and display that image for which we were created. And so, the good is that we would be conformed to the image of the Son of God, of Christ himself. Rom. 8:29

            The good is not something from this world or of value in this world. The good is to be made fit and to be put to use for something different.

            The good is be given a new identity, to be conformed to the image of our Creator. (Col. 3:10) That let us make man in our own image purpose of Genesis 1:26-17, is being renewed. To be conformed to Christ is our good.

            We long for this good, because this good fulfills the reason we are. Stamped upon every human being is the desire for this good, the greatest of all goods: to reflect the image of God.

            And if that is so, it is no wonder our life is marked with such trouble. How then can be conformed, if to be conformed is good?

New Creatures in an Old Creation

25 Tuesday May 2021

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Mortification, Uncategorized

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Biblical Counsleing, Identity, Mortification, New Creation

All human beings are born into the wrong world. As we look more closely and consider the particulars, we see we are born into the wrong time and the wrong place; the wrong city and the wrong century. Sometimes it seems we are born into the wrong family and are born with the wrong skin.

This is the trouble of the Fall: We were created for a Garden, but we were born into a wilderness. We created with dominion over creation, to keep and care; but we are born under domination, in world of dominion run amuck. We were created royalty and live as serfs. We were created to live forever and born with a body programmed to fail. Everywhere, the cosmos may have space for us to live, but at the same moment contains snares which catch and kill. Even the sun and the water present danger as we need them both.

If the trouble were merely external, perhaps we could bear it with equanimity. But we are born subject to irrational, deceitful desires:

This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. 

Ecclesiastes 9:3 (ESV) 

There is the default to human existence. You need do nothing to achieve madness, or sorrow, or death. As Ms. Dickinson wryly wrote:

Because I could not stop for Death – 
He kindly stopped for me 

It takes no effort to die.

There is no solution to this trouble within the scope of this creation. The brokenness of the creation cannot be mended from the inside. It as if one is an ancient wooden ship in the heart of the sea while the hurricane roars and the planks break and the water charges in. How will you mend the breach? You cannot come to shore and prepare the wood and patch the break.  You will be able to make planks from water as you will be able to remedy the world. 

The One who has cursed the whole is greater than all the creation besides. The certainty of the end will not be moved. 

And us, we cannot look to us to escape this doom. The insanity of my heart will never be repaired by my insane heart. The efforts of your insanity will not cure me. How will the mad ever cure the mad?

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

“How do you know I’m mad,” said Alice.

“You must be, said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

And the enemy Death stands as the absolute bar. It will not be avoided. Even if someone managed to drag their corpse 1,000 years into the future, Death would still be waiting. At 1,000 years more, Death would have been there first. 

And what of those 2,000 years? Will the depraved heart be avoided? Will time finally make you good and wise? Will you rise above the common lot of humanity? 

Since no one here gets out alive, the only solution must be to somehow find a door out. The Creation being under a curse; the sentence in stone, irreversible.  As Thomas Brooks wrote centuries ago, “This world at last shall be burnt for a witch.”

No remedy could come from ourselves, we being too weak, too contingent, too mad. The remedy of God is not spare the present evil, but to rescue us from the same:

3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 

Galatians 1:3–4 (ESV). We receive papers to become citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20). We are made “new creatures” and are reconciled to God in this new identity:

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 

2 Corinthians 5:17–21 (ESV). And we, as new creations, reconciled to God, bearing the righteousness of Christ await the New Creation, the New Heavens and the New Earth where sin, sorrow, death have been forever put away. “Behold,” says God “I am making all things new.” (Rev. 21:5)

And yet, despite such good news, a difficulty remains. We are rescued, but not yet. We are bound for the Promised Land, and we are living in the wilderness. We are made new creatures, but at present hold an earnest expectation of our full inheritance. A now which tarries over a “little while” (and O how that “little while” can seem), we are grieved with various trials.

We are going to the New Creation, but we are present in the Old. The scent of death still clings to everything we possess. The Creation is doomed and everywhere shows signs of groaning, as it too awaits its redemption.

That is a trouble indeed, but it is not the worst trouble we face in our new status. We are new creations, and yet seemingly not. It can seem more that we have awakened to a heightened sense of trouble, rather than having been delivered. As Thomas Manton wrote, “We are not yet out of gunshot till we come to the end of our race, and are conquerors over all opposition.” (Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 20 (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1874), 79.)

Think of this more carefully. We are plainly said to be set free from sin:

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 

Romans 6:5–10 (ESV) Here he says that we have been set free from sin. And in just another few sentences he will write, “For sin will not have dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” (Rom. 6:14) We look to John’s first letter and read, “By this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.” (1 John 2:3)

And it seems by logic that being a New Creature, I should look the part. And yet, John also writes, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8). If we have no sin upon salvation, then why the detailed instructions to all the churches? Why are we told that if we confess our sins, we will be cleansed? 

Perhaps we need to stop and consider the utter depth and persistence of sin. Someone may consider themselves to be freed from sin. Have you avoided even the thought of lust or anger? Can you say that you have loved God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Do you love your neighbor as yourself? And what of enemies? Do you love them. Do you pray for them? Do you bless them?  And have you done this utter humility without the tinge of pride? Has all been for God’s glory, alone?

You see, sin sticks more closely to the new creature than may have at first seemed possible. This is why the Scripture records sin even in the best of saints. Luther in his first Thesis wrote, “The whole life of believers should be repentance.”

How then has this serpent managed to find his way into the life of the New Creature? Where does this monster make its den? Paul says it clings to us as flesh. And what could be nearer than flesh? James shows the danger in our own desire:

14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. 

James 1:14–15 (ESV) And so, Paul writes to the Romans whom he said were freed from sin to murder sin:

12 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 

Romans 8:12–13 (ESV). This whole thing becomes seemingly more confused. How will this take place? There are myriad of issues and errors which can arise as we contemplate this instruction. But there is one which I particularly wish to consider: We cannot put sin to death without a change of identity.

Let us ignore for a moment the many things which are present in this command and look carefully at this element: The death of sin is not merely the death of this or that desire, this or that behavior. It is not as if a perfect being will be revealed if I merely scrub off the mud. 

Sin is far more dangerous and damaging than that. To be this New Creature means something far more profound that teaching me manners and buying me new clothes. It means becoming someone else — and yet to become whom I was created to be. It means to shed sin and shame in a manner for more fundamental than can easily be understood. 

The Scripture uses words life-death, resurrection and burial, renewal. Look at these seemingly simple words:

9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Colossians 3:9–10 (ESV)

You could read this and see the old self is put off, the new self is put on, I now just need to tidy-up. But look more carefully at verse 10: to be the New Self is to be in the process of transformation. The New Self in possession today is not the end but the beginning. The mortification of sin, the forgetting those things which lie behind and pressing on, is a process of becoming something else. 

If you come to grips with this idea, it is disorienting. Perhaps we think of the person who has led a dramatically chaotic life who comes to Christ, gets a job, and gives to others and marries and raises children. Certainly, there is a radical-change, and we all appreciate it and give God glory for such a thing. 

But what I am saying here is that the depth of the change is far deeper than giving up the most damaging of overt behaviors. We must give up an idol of self which is more fundamental in our thinking than we easily understand.

We give up this self, we crucify this self – not in the self-abnegation of mysticism, but in the utter transformation of new life in light of the Resurrection of Christ. 

I have seen that one reason mortification is so impossible and some much good counsel goes to waste and so many believers struggle dejectedly with sin is that we seek to mortify sin without mortifying self; we seek to remain ourselves and merely shed our sin. But we are called to become something new.

Go back to that language of New Creation. It is not a promise that we will be ourselves with a ticket to the Promised Land. It is a promise that we are and will become something which we were not before. 

And so rather than simply seek to hammer away at persistent sin by resistance, we are called up to become someone for whom such sins are unthinkable. Sin should be as strange to us as cuddling a porcupine or drinking lava.

How then is this new identity – because it is nothing less than a new identity – formed?

Identity.1

04 Wednesday Nov 2020

Posted by memoirandremains in Identity

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Identity

The question of identity has been washing around in my thoughts for a while. First, identity is critical to the entire nature of what it is to be a human being. I think we could best understand all of the troubles human beings have psychologically, emotionally, spiritually in terms of identity. Even our relation to physical ailments and the natural world is bound up with this question of identity. Our troubles with anxiety, depression, and so on are ultimate questions about identity, because identity is the space in which we relate to ourselves and to all others. 

Second, this question of identity is critical to what it is to be a Christian. When Paul writes, “It is no longer I who live,” in Galatians 2: 20, he is addressing identity. When he writes in Romans 6:11 to reckon (as the KJV has it) yourself dead to sin and alive to God, he is addressing identity.

It seems that a great deal of what is taking place the instructions and commands and promises and comforts is the purposeful construction of an identity. If sin comes from the heart, then the solution for sin is trying to not do or think some X. The solution is to have a heart which does not produce such things. This is a question of identity. 

And so for instance, on the question of mortification, it can be I should mortify that; which is true, but perhaps the manner is more the question of be someone in whom that does not grow. Rather than being “me” and not doing “that,” it is being someone whose identity does not produce that. This seems to be the point of passages such as 2 Corinthians 3:18.

So then what do I mean by “identity.” And, I am not pontificating but imagining and trying to think this through. And if anyone is kind enough to read this and have an opinion, a question, a modification, it would be appreciated. 

Imagine someone who awakens in a strange place without the faintest memory of the moment before. No one else knows this person, no one can “identify” this person. This person is a cypher. At the moment he (it’s easier with a pronoun) wakes, he has a very thin identity: He means nothing to himself, beyond perhaps, “Who am I?” And until he comes into contact with another, he means nothing to anyone else. 

But even the question of “Who am I” presupposes some relational aspect. This character’s relationship to his own body is in place: I am here, I am hot or cold, hungry or full and so on. But to ask “Who am I” actually implicitly entails another question, “Who I am in relationship to other human beings?

If he searches for his name, his name is what other people call him. He does not need a name to think to himself. He can observe the sun and sleep and eat all without a name; but to interact with other human beings is to have a name. A name is the way other people select me from a potential group. My name begins to situate me with respect to other people. 

So if our amnesiac tries to situate himself in the world, he is seeking to situate himself to other people. If he thinks, “What is my name?” He is thinking what to do other people call me?

This then creates his own relationship to this name. Before he has a name and before he is in relationship to others, his identity is potentiality: but there is very little identity there to be had.

We can consider this in a different manner: What if he thinks to himself, the entire world has been destroyed and I alone am alive. I am in relation to no one else. Would he have an identity which is premised upon other people? Yes. He would be someone whose identity is to have no relationship to other people.

But even in this there would be a relational identity, It would be the relationship of how he thinks about himself: almost as if there were two, the man himself, and the man’s relationship to himself. 

An identity, at least tentatively, is a sort of social relationship; it is this thing which presents and is presented to others. As such it is a creation of that relationship(s). 

What God says of our Identity 

23 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Image of God, imago dei, Preaching

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Identity, image of God, Imago Dei, Martin Luther, Preaching

But his theology of the cross involved the recognition that God sometimes works “under the appearance of opposites.” Thus Luther strove to cultivate in the congregation a faith that rested in confidence on God’s presence and promise even when his strength was being perfected in their weakness, as God had told Paul he was doing in the apostle’s life (2 Cor. 12:9). In this sermon on Mark 5 Luther, in both temporal and spiritual dimensions of life, poses the contrast of what human beings see in the world and what Christ sees. David had seen himself as a poor shepherd, and so had the world, but Christ viewed him as a king. “All of you who have faith in me regard yourselves as poor sinners, but I regard you as precious saints; I regard you as like the angels. I simply speak not more than a single word, and sin, death, sickness have to yield, and righteousness, life, and health come in their place. The way I speak determines how things are; they cannot be otherwise.” 

Robert Kolb, Luther and the Stories of God, Chapter 3

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