Today we look at the question,
“Who am I?” It is such a short question, but it reaches to the deepest parts of
us. I want to start this message with an exercise – get out a piece of paper,
and answer the question for yourself: Who am I? Don’t worry about giving the
“right” answer, or trying to guess the Biblical answer, or to give the answer
you think you want me to have you put. Simply search yourself and answer the
question as honestly as you can. Maybe try to think of three to five honest
answers to this question. I’ll give you a minute to do this.
To every question we ask
in this series, the world of course offers many answers of its own. It is of
course extremely rare that such answers are in accordance with the truth that
the Bible teaches about the answers to these questions. On the question of “Who
am I?”, one of the world’s answers came a few years back through a musical
called Dear Evan Hansen. I cannot recommend the musical, even though it was
critically acclaimed, and even more can I not recommend the follow-up movie
version, which was strongly panned by those same critics. My primary reason for
recommending you stay away is not because of the quality, however, but because
it propagates the world’s answers to this question. There is, no surprise, also
other morally questionable content in other aspects in this story.
I think it is useful to
look at the storyline for this musical, because it can be helpful to look at
the world’s answers and see if you have been, well, sucked in by them. The
themes, you will see, are very familiar, and if we thought about it, I bet we
could come up with dozens of movies and other storylines that give the same
kinds of answers.
In this story, the
character Evan Hansen is an awkward high-school student who is regularly
troubled by bullying and who frequently experiences social anxiety. His
therapist tells him that he should write letters to himself each day detailing
what will be good about that day. The show opens with Evan staring at such a
letter he has written which says, “Dear Evan Hansen, today is going to be an
amazing day, and here’s why: Because today, all you have to do is just be
yourself. But also confident. That’s important. And interesting. Easy to talk
to. Approachable. But mostly be yourself. That’s the big, that’s number one. Be
yourself. Be true to yourself.”
The note is funny because
it is relatable but also because it’s impossible. A person suffering from
social anxiety is, by definition, not confident. The letter clues the audience
in to the fact that Evan is dealing with a bunch of contradictory goals, and
even Evan, it seems, recognizes this a little, when he tells himself to
“mostly” be himself.
Without getting into the
details of the story, the main thing that happens is that a series of events
causes people to assume things about Evan that are not true. Evan attempts to
correct the misunderstanding, but people do not believe him. Then, in an
anxiety-producing social situation, Evan decides it is easier and maybe better
for him to go along with the misunderstanding, and he turns it into “the great
lie” about his life. At times he wrestles with guilt, but he continues to
promote the lie for years. Finally, he comes clean about the lie. And here is
how he opens his final letter: “Dear Evan Hansen, Today is going to be a good day and
here’s why. Because today, no matter what else, today at least… you’re you. No
hiding, no lying. Just… you. And that’s… that’s enough.”
Self-acceptance. Loving
yourself. Accepting yourself for who you are. Do these themes sound familiar?
These are the themes of countless movies, TV shows, and books.
Now, let’s look at this
theme in light of the Bible. We need to be careful, because there is an element
of something good here – that element is the principle of self-honesty. I think
of Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector from Luke 18:
“Two men
went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax
collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed:
‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or
even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week
and give a tenth of all I get.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance.
He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God,
have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other,
went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be
humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” – Luke 18:10-14
The theme of humility, of
assessing oneself correctly, not looking at oneself through rose-colored
glasses, is mentioned again and again in the Bible as a necessary condition for
coming to God. Lying about yourself, to others, and to yourself, is a roadblock
to a relationship with God. “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the
humble.”
But I am afraid that this
message of “just be yourself, because you are OK, because you are fine, because
you are great, or even, as in the case of Hansen, because you are enough” is
wrong. People who say and think link this are much more subtle than the
Pharisee in the parable, but they are actually guilty of the same sin. You are
not OK, you are not fine, you are not great, and you are not enough. Yes, we
should not propagate lies about ourselves to portray ourselves as what we are
not. But neither should we judge ourselves using our own scales. We need to use
the scales of God. And God says we are not enough. “For all have sinned
and fall short of the glory of God.” “And the wages of sin are death.”
The error of Evan Hansen
and countless other works of fiction is that they teach that self-acceptance is
the magic cure to our character problems. They are not. Our root problems don’t
go away just because we feel good about ourselves. We are broken, and we cannot
fix ourselves. This gets to the core message of the gospel. Jesus came to
earth, lived without sin, and died on a cross to redeem us, to rescue us from
ourselves and to restore our relationship with a perfectly holy God. If you
have surrendered your life to God, receiving through faith Jesus’ gift of
payment for your sins, today, and every day, is a good day because you are a sinner
saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ, and I think this is a good
first answer to the question, “Who am I?”
For a second good answer,
I encourage you to think about adoption. The Little House on the Prairie TV
series has many tear-jerker moments. One of my favorites is an episode called Fagin
involving Albert, a boy the Ingalls find surviving in the streets that they
invite to live with them. In is episode, the daughter Laura becomes jealous of
the growing relationship between Pa and Albert. Albert picks up on this and
runs away. Pa finds him while they are at the county fair and convinces him to
watch the awards ceremony for a contest. Laura and Albert had raised an animal
for this contest. Laura wins and is asked to make a statement. Albert and Pa
see her, but she doesn’t see them. She says that she didn’t really win the
contest, but instead, that her brother, a term she uses with emphasis
and love, is responsible. Albert absolutely melts and comes running to her to
hug her, and Pa melts too. I challenge you to watch this episode and not shed a
tear at the end.
Adoption stories are
powerful. They melt us, I think, because deep down our desire to be in a
family, with unconditional love, is one of our greatest desires. The Bible uses
adoption as a powerful symbol of our relationship with God. To better
understand this symbol, we need to understand adoption in the Roman world.
Today, we use wills to
indicate who we want to leave our possessions to after we die, and we can pick
absolutely anyone at all. But in the times of the New Testament, in the Roman
world, in nearly all situations, possessions could only be passed on to a
person’s sons. What if you had no living sons, or what if you were estranged
from your sons or thought them incapable of handling the responsibilities of
managing the possessions? Then your only recourse was to adopt someone as your
son who you wanted to take over the estate after you die. This person was
almost never an infant, but instead could be an adult. It could even be someone
older than you. When the adoption legal proceedings were completed, the adoptee
would get a new name, have all his debts cancelled (paid by the estate), and
would legally be able to take over the estate when you passed away.
Interestingly, this legal process of adoption was irreversible. You could
choose to legally separate yourself from your biological sons, but you could
not do this with your adoptee.
The movie Ben-Hur
illustrates Roman adoption. Judah Ben-Hur is a Jew who is a prisoner whose
punishment is being a rower on a Roman ship. Rowing was one of the harshest
punishments, in that the life was so grueling that most people died in a short
amount of time. In a battle, the ship sinks and Judah saves the life of Arius,
a Roman military commander. Arius’ only son has died. Thankful for Judah, by
the movie’s end, Arius adopts Judah. As part of the adoption, Judah is set free
from the punishment he had been serving, he is given Arius’ signet ring, and he
is given a new name, “Young Arius”. He is now, irrevocably, the person that
will inherit Arius’ estate. In the scene were this is pronounced, Judah (now
Young Arius) says he has been given a new life, a new home, and a new father.
But when the set time had fully come, God
sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive
adoption to sonship. Because you are his
sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who
calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no
longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you
also an heir. – Galatians 4:4-7
This discussion emphasizes
the legal side of adoption, and this is important, because we too have our
debts cancelled, we too have our punishment lifted, we too are irrevocable
heirs of the future Kingdom.
Some additional verses
that speak of our adoption are as follows:
“And I will be a father to you, and you shall
be sons and daughters to Me,” says the Lord Almighty. – 2 Corinthians 6:18
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you
slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received
brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”
The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are
God’s children. – Romans 8:14-16
But unlike the Roman
adults who were selected as sons because of their skillsets, and unlike Judah Ben-Hur
who was selected by Arius because he had helped him, we are adopted for
entirely different reasons. Consider:
See how great a love the Father has bestowed on
us, that we would be called children of God. And that is what we are! – I John
3:1a
It is not because of our
works that God loves us and has adopted us. It is in spite of our bad works
that He does. I think of how Jesus explains in John 16 that he will cease to be
their physical representative for an unapproachable holy God. They will instead
have access to the Father by praying in Jesus’ name. In explaining that it will
not be like it was, Jesus tells them,
“No, the Father himself loves you because you
have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” – John 16:27
And in Romans 5, Paul further explains:
You see, at just the right time, when we
were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a
good person someone might possibly dare to die. But
God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners,
Christ died for us. – Romans 5:6-8
And so I think a second
good answer to the Believer’s question “Who am I?” is that you are a dearly
loved adopted child of God.
These two answers to the
question of your identity, that you are a sinner saved by the grace of God
through Jesus Christ, and that you are a dearly loved adopted child of God, are
true of us as Christian believers even if we forget they are true. But I have a
third answer to this question I want to give, and this one is a little
different, because it is one we can choose to accept or to reject.
I want to go back to the
question of our identity in the quote real world. I will be honest here and
admit that my entire Christian life, now about 33 years, I have struggled with
the problem of compartmentalization, of having seemingly having different
identities in different spheres of my life. I believe that this happens to
people, including me, because we let others and situations define us instead of
continually consciously choosing to define ourselves.
The hard reality is that
we do not live in a Christian nation. We don’t live in a Christian state, even
though it is supposedly in the Bible belt. We live in a secular society. The
default assumption nearly everyone will make when they meet you is that you are
like them, “normal”, meaning that although you might have some belief in God,
and might even be a Christian, that life is kept separate from your day-to-day
doings. This message is reinforced every single day by people you meet, pay for
your groceries, work with, go to school with, are taught by, and so on.
A number of years ago I
made the decision that every first day of class I would tell people that I am a
Christian, give them a link to a very short testimony, and tell them that they
can talk to me if they want to learn more. I have told myself that I do this as
a form of outreach, for them. But it is equally, if not more, true that I do it
for me. It forces me to decompartmentalize my life, to not separate my quote
Christian life from the rest of my life.
But I still struggle with this
issue in other areas of my life. In Faculty Commons I am very reticent to
mention that I am a pastor, because my experience is that this fact causes
people to put up a bit of a wall, to separate a bit from me. I do not want
this. I want to live my life as an example for others, but I feel that some of
the things I do (such as being a pastor) would freak most people out. Another
example would be how in past years we have hosted teams at our home to reach
out on campus, and how, I have even done some outreach activities on campus
with them. When I do this I know I am breaking rules, but I feel led to do it,
so I do it anyway. One of my new favorite quotes is from the great evangelist
Louis Palao, from an interview with Lee Strobel. It was actually the last
interview Palao gave before succumbing to cancer. Here is what he said: “When
you get to the end of your life, and all is said and done, you will never regret being courageous for Christ.”
As
a result of the plants-only diet I have been on the past four years, a diet
that has helped reverse my heart disease, I have made friends in an online
community of people who are on similar diets. There have been a few times, with
individuals, that I have shared my Christian beliefs with them – cases where an
analogy or situation was so compelling that I simply could not choose otherwise
– but by and large people do not know about my faith. Is this OK? I think of
Matthew 10. I want to read a large chunk of this chapter without a break, so we
hear it in context; this is not a passing little remark, but a major theme of
Jesus:
“I am
sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes
and as innocent as doves. Be on your
guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the
synagogues. On my account you will be brought
before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to
say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your
Father speaking through you. – Matthew 10:16-20
“Brother
will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel
against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who
stands firm to the end will be saved. When you are
persecuted in one place, flee to another. – Matthew 10:21-23a
What I tell you in the dark, speak in the
daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.
Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. –
Matthew 10:27-28a
“Whoever
acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in
heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will
disown before my Father in heaven. – Matthew 10:32-33
“Do not
suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring
peace, but a sword. For I have
come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own
household.’ – Matthew 10:34-36
“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy
of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and
follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their
life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. –
Matthew 10:37-39
Jesus
is talking about people losing their lives for the sake of sharing the gospel,
and I am struggling with saying something in environments that are completely
safe. Who am I? Who shall I choose to be? Again, we are talking here about
something that we can choose. We can choose certain aspects of our identity.
And
so this third answer to the question, I believe, is a choice we can make that
should be our response to the first two answers. Because I am a sinner saved by the grace of God
through Jesus Christ, and because I am a dearly loved adopted child of God, I choose
to be as Paul puts it, a doulos of Christ.
This is a surprising term
that Paul uses to describe himself. If you recall, Paul starts his letters by
giving the “From” and the “To” lines, kind of like an email header. An example
is the opening of Philippians:
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all God’s holy
people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the
overseers and deacons: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the
Lord Jesus Christ. – Philippians 1:1-2
The word translated servants, is “doulos”. In New Testament times,
a doulos was a servant who was lowliest of the low. They were at the bottom in
terms of the class hierarchy. They could have become slaves through being
captured in war, through not being able to pay their debts, through being found
guilty of committing certain crimes, and simply from being born to a mother who
as also a doulos. If you remember, Paul was actually a Roman citizen; this gave
him all kinds of rights and privileges. A doulos is the opposite of a citizen:
he had no rights, no freedoms, at all. Now this does not mean that they were
uneducated; some were uneducated, but others were highly educated accountants
and physicians. They were expected to use all their abilities, training, and
gifting in service to their master. As slaves, they were literally owned by
their masters. That is, their masters had bought them at a price. So how
interesting that Paul, a Roman citizen, repeatedly calls himself a doulos of
Christ, and he also calls Timothy the same.
To be a doulos of Christ, to
be identified in this way, to give this as a response to the question “Who am
I?” is a choice. As a practical matter, we all are doulos, because we
were all slaves to sin, and God redeemed us at a great price, the price of
Jesus Christ on the cross. As it is written in Romans 6,
Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient
slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to
sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to
righteousness? – Romans 6:16
But I believe that to
answer the question “Who am I” with “I am a doulos of Jesus Christ” is
something more than the simple acknowledgment of this truth. It is a life-changing
mindset. It is to take Matthew 10 seriously and apply it to your life.
Just yesterday, I received
an email, a prayer request, from a US pastor who is building and helping to
support the church in Myanmar. One of the pastors there sent a note to the US
pastor saying the following:
“Thank you for your prayer.
It is terrible to live in Myanmar right now but I am happy to serve God at any
cost amid all situations. The God of the mountain is still the God of the
valley.”
We are surrounded by a
cloud of witnesses, not just those heroes of the faith in the book of Hebrews,
but present-day believers around the world who are each truly a doulos of Jesus
Christ.
Having an answer to the
question “Who am I?” is extremely important, but not just so that we can feel
good about ourselves, as Evan Hanson and much of the rest of the world
encourages us to do. The reason the question of identity is so important is
that we tend to live out what we believe about ourselves. If you try to live
out this life on earth with the goal of pleasing yourself, you will fail,
because nothing in this world truly satisfies. But if you identify yourself as
a sinner saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ, as a dearly loved
adopted child of God, and as a doulos of Jesus Christ, you will find the “pearl
of great price”: joy that never fades, and peace that transcends all
understanding. Let these three facets of who you are flood into every corner of
your thoughts. Let it reorder your priorities. Let it change your plans. Let it
be that you too can say, “I am happy to serve God at any cost in all
situations. The God of the mountain is still the God of the valley.”
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