LOSING YOUR IDENTITY - Part II
II Chron. 4:17-18 —“In the plain of Jordan did the king cast them, in the clay ground between Succoth and Zeredathah. Thus Solomon made all these vessels in great abundance: for the weight of the brass could not be found out.”
SANCTIFICATION
At the same time that our salvation experience begins, so does the process of sanctification. This is the process by which the Holy Spirit will mold the believer into the image of God. But let it be known that this work is not done quickly, nor is it done easily. It will be an activity that will take a lifetime for the Holy Spirit to bring us to the place that He desires us to be. I say it will be a lifelong procedure, because it’s not easy for the Holy Spirit to teach us to depend upon the Spirit and not at all on the flesh, for this is something that the believer has to learn.
Believers, and I speak for all believers, do not give up works of the flesh easily, bearing in mind that much of what we as believers do is ever so religious, it confuses us to believe that what we are doing is a walking after the Spirit when in reality it’s not. Walking after the Spirit has nothing to do with what we do, but rather where our faith is located.
Our faith must ever be secured in Christ and what He did at the Cross, which gives the Holy Spirit license to work in our lives in the way that He so desires. The divine way of holiness is to ultimately put off the old man, not to improve the old man. This is where most Christians make their mistakes, they try to improve the old man by adding all sorts of accoutrements to make themselves look better in the eyes of God, but this is a wrong way of doing things. We are not to improve the old man, but rather take off the old man, which means that the old man is dead and has been rendered useless. We are to put on the new man, which is found in Christ.
HOW CAN WE PUT OFF THE OLD MAN?
The question looms now as to how are we to put off the old man and how can we put on the new?
Let us look at Romans 6:6: “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth, we should not serve sin.”
The “old man” that Paul is referring to here is what we used to be before we accepted Christ as our Saviour – a person that was totally and completely controlled and ruled by the sin nature. The sin nature, which I have dealt with any number of times in these articles, is the nature that we are born with and completely against God. It is something that we are born with, for every child is born with two natures – the human nature, which makes up who we are; and the sin nature, which is the inner bent toward sin. This inner bent toward sin was, without our knowledge, begins to take the helm of our lives and steer our lives in a direction that will lead to failure and destruction. At the moment of salvation, the sin nature was “unplugged,” if you will, never to bother us again.
BEING UNPLUGGED
To use an analogy from my childhood, the very first video game console that my brother and I ever got was the original Nintendo. It was a gray box that had two controllers, and these controllers had a directional pad, a select button, a start button, and A and B buttons. Also, in order to control your character, the controller had to be plugged in (back then, there was no such thing as a wireless control). If the controller was unplugged, then your character could not be controlled.
Likewise, before we accepted Christ, the sin nature was “plugged in” and it controlled everything that we did. But at the moment of salvation, the Holy Spirit unplugged the sin nature from us, so that it could not control us anymore. The problem that we encounter after our salvation experience is that we do everything we can to live right and to do right. But as humans, we are going to fail, and when the failure comes, what happens next is what causes all sorts of problems to arise in our lives. After the failure, we begin to look to other things to maintain victory over sin, and when we do that, the sin nature plugs back into our lives, and it resumes control of what we do.
I know this seems confusing to the believer, seeing that Paul just said in Romans 6:6 that the “body of sin might be destroyed,” and here I am saying that the sin nature is not destroyed, but can cause us problems, even in our Christian experience. How can this be?
Let’s look at the word destroyed, for this word in the Greek means, “to make void, or ineffective.” It does not refer to annihilation, as some tend to think. When we accept Christ, the sin nature becomes dormant – not annihilated or never to bother us again – provided that our faith is anchored, and continually so, in the Cross of Christ. But, if our faith is moved from the Cross of Christ to something else, no matter what it might be, it will cause the sin nature once again to rise up in dominance and take control of our lives once again.
HE TOOK, BLESSED, BRAKE, AND GAVE
Losing our identity – our original subject – is not an easy process, and, in reality, it takes a lifetime for the Holy Spirit to remove the flesh to where we are not dependent upon the works of the flesh, but rather the moving of the Holy Spirit.
As mentioned, this is not an easy process. We fail to understand that after our salvation experience, and even after being filled with the Spirit, there is much work that needs to be accomplished, which can only come about by and through the person of the Holy Spirit. This process is known as sanctification, and it is a must for us, as believers, to be what we ought to be, and it cannot be done without the Holy Spirit.
Let’s look at an event in the New Testament that will hopefully better explain what we are discussing. This is found in Matthew 14:19: “And He commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, He blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to His disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.”
The outline is that first of all, the Lord “took” the bread and the fish, and this speaks of taking us at salvation. Then the Scripture says that He “blessed” the food, for this is exactly what happens now that we are saved – we are blessed – and that blessing extends to just about everything that we do. However, this illustration does not stop there; the very next part is a process that we don’t necessarily like to discuss, and that is the “breaking.” After Christ took the bread and the fish, He blessed the food, then He broke it. This process is not at all pleasant, but it is a necessity. This process is a violent process, and does not come about quickly or easily, but come about it must. This is where the Holy Spirit has to break us down, only to build us back up again.
Think of it this way, when a person joins the United States Armed Forces, the very first thing that happens after that person enlists is basic training. This is where each individual who joins is completely broken down only to be rebuilt into a man or woman fit for the United States Armed Forces. This process is a long, rigorous, exhausting operation, but it has to be done in order for that person to be what is needed.
It is the same for the believer. Once we are saved, we are enlisted into the army of the Lord. The Holy Spirit has to break us down so that all dependence on the flesh is done away with, only to build us back up again in order to be given to the world. Too many Christians want to be given to the world for the cause of Christ, but have not yet been broken. This cannot be done, just as a person cannot be declared a soldier fit for battle until he has gone through the process of being broken.
YOUR NEW IDENTITY
The key to losing your identity is to understand who you are in Christ. The old man – your old identity – has been crucified in Christ, and a new man – a new identity – has been raised with Him in newness of life. This takes place through simple faith in Christ and what He did at Calvary’s Cross, through which the Holy Spirit can do all that He yearns to do.
At the same time, this process is not a onetime event, but rather a lifelong journey where the Holy Spirit continually burns out that which needs to be removed (Matt. 3:11), and replenishes us with that which He desires. Honestly, it is imperative that the Holy Spirit do this, for without His work of melting the flesh, we cannot be, or we cannot hope to be, what He wants us to be.
As the Holy Spirit used this analogy of Solomon burning and melting the gold, silver, and brass, He did so to make something new. This is what the Holy Spirit desires, to melt away the old and to make of us something new.
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