What Is True Identity?

Ask people who they are and you usually hear a job, a relationship, or something they enjoy. Culture says identity is fluid: you can be anything you want. Scripture gives a steadier answer. Your true identity is who God says you are, the person He created and loves. What you are should shape what you do, not the other way around.

Where does true identity come from?

True identity comes from God, your Creator. The most basic relationship any person has is Creator and created. Before you did anything, God made you in His image.

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27

The image of God is the divine imprint every person carries because God made us. It is sometimes called the imago Dei. It gives every person worth, and it does not change with your mood, your résumé, or the latest trend.

God did not create you because He needed something. On Beyond Sunday, Pastor Sean Sloan put it this way: the source of all love and life loved us into being. That is the ground your identity stands on.

Why does identity feel so fluid today?

Identity feels fluid because we confuse being with doing. A younger voice on the episode noted that in his generation identity is often treated as something you can choose and change. You can do whatever you want and be whatever you want.

The truth is more careful than that. You really can do many things, more than you often give yourself credit for. But you cannot simply be anything you want.

Listen to how people answer the question "Who are you?"

• Career: I'm a doctor, a teacher, a lawyer.
• Relationships: I'm a husband, a mom, a student.
• Desires: I am the things I enjoy and express.

In every case the logic runs the same way: this is what I do, so this is what I am. The fix is to reverse it. What I am should inform what I do.

Behavior will change over a lifetime. Desires shift, trends come and go, and even how much people talk about identity will rise and fall. What stays fixed is what God designed you to be and to whom you belong. Anything else you build your identity on will be relative, and the result is a false self.

Who decides what is true about you?

God does, because truth is not just an idea. Truth is a person.

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

John 14:6

If your true self is whatever is really true about you, then the question becomes who has the authority to say what is true. Jesus does. Your true identity comes from Truth Himself speaking over you. That gives you something solid and objective in an age that treats everything as relative.

So the place to start is Scripture. Open the Bible and ask, "God, who do You say I am?" Culture will tell you what you can be or do. Scripture tells you who you were created to be.

How did Jesus live from His identity?

Everything Jesus did flowed out of who He was. His ministry began with His identity.

At His baptism, the Spirit came down on Him and the Father spoke:

You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.

Luke 3:22

Soon after, Jesus stood in the synagogue in Nazareth and read from Isaiah 61.

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

Luke 4:18 to 19

Then He said, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:21). He wasn't only reading Isaiah. He was saying the prophecy was about Him. Notice the order: identity, then the Spirit's power, then mission. Jesus acted out of who He was, whose He was, and the power the Spirit gave Him. That same order is meant for you.

How does identity lead to purpose?

Once you know who you are in Christ, you have direction. Pastor Sean described it this way. Purpose is participation in Christ and His work, sharing in relationship with Him and in what He is doing in you and through you.

Jesus prayed for exactly this kind of union.

I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one, I in them and you in me, so that they may be brought to complete unity.

John 17:22 to 23

Through Christ you are brought into God, and through the Spirit you become His child. From there, Pastor Sean said, believers stand with Christ reaching for the world. We also stand with the world reaching for Christ, as sinners saved by grace who still need a Savior ourselves.

Part of that purpose is the gifts God has placed in you. For example, Karen Carter, who leads Calvary's Next Steps ministry, described what happens in Growth Track when people take the spiritual gifts assessment. They get excited to discover that God gave them specific gifts for His work, at church, at home, and at work. You could do something you weren't made for and do fine. When you do what God designed you for, you come alive.

Every life is lived under some authority. Either you submit to the One who created you, or you follow the one who offers a false version of reality. Scripture keeps putting that choice in front of us: "choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve" (Joshua 24:15). The invitation is to choose your true design.

Common questions

What does it mean to find your identity in Christ?

It means letting God define who you are rather than your job, relationships, or desires. Your identity starts with being created by God, loved by Him, and brought into His family through Jesus.

What is the image of God?

The image of God, or imago Dei, is the divine imprint every person carries because God created us (Genesis 1:27). It gives every person value and shapes how we are meant to live.

What is the mission of God?

The mission of God, or missio Dei, is God's work of restoring people and the world to Himself. Believers find their purpose by joining Christ in that work, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

How do I discover my spiritual gifts?

Spend time in Scripture, serve alongside others, and take a spiritual gifts assessment. At Calvary, that assessment is part of Growth Track, a one-time, 90-minute class on the second and fourth Sundays of the month, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., in Room 126 (near Door 29). Register for Growth Track. Many people find that using their gifts at church, at home, and at work brings real joy.