The video above will encourage you to find your identity in Christ.
Put on Christ every single day. Wake up and say, “Who am I? I’m a child of God in Christ. I am united with Christ. I have put on Christ. I belong to Christ.”
Put him on every day.
The final thing we’ll say about clothes is that once we put them on, they’re there and they’re closer to us than anything else, right, by definition. And what that does then is—to a large degree—it shapes how we feel. Don’t they?
That’s why we wear favorite outfits.
That’s why you guys see me just wearing the same shirts in the pulpit week in and week out, right? I only have a few. It’s because those are the shirts that I feel good in.
And so the clothing that you have on shapes the way that you feel. You know that you might wear a certain thing because it makes you feel comfortable. Other things you’re wearing, you’re like, “Gosh, I feel frumpy in this,” so you don’t want to wear it right? It just hangs in the closet forever. Right? Certain other things make you feel smart, or educated, whatever.
Our clothes, to a large degree, how close they are to us, even the way that they feel and how they fit us, they shape how we feel.
And how you feel shapes how you behave.
Don’t deny that. How you feel shapes how you behave and so it shapes how you treat other people.
We put on Christ. I belong to him. I’m united with him. I’m a child of God in him. That is supposed to affect the way we feel. And that will affect the way that we behave and the way that we treat one another because Christ fits perfectly.
It’s like the favorite jacket. Just yeah, I put that thing on and I’m like, “What’s up? Just feeling and looking good!” Put Christ on it affects everything about your life.
Ephesians 4 would say this, I’ll just read it to you, verse 21, “Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes, and put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy” (Ephesians 4:21-24 NLT).
In Christ—our identity is in Christ so that we now see ourselves as existing in him. And every other way that we previously saw ourselves, both positive—gosh, I’ve achieved a lot, I’ve got all this money, I’ve done all these things, I have all this recognition—and negative—I’ve failed a lot, I haven’t gone anywhere, and I have these wounds, and I was abandoned—all those things that previously would’ve shaped our identity are now abandoned and completely subservient to who we are in Christ, for ourselves and for each other.
Church, don’t put anything on one another other than Christ. Stop putting trips on each other. Don’t put stuff on each other except for Jesus because when we do that then we force each other to try to draw identity from other places.
We gotta help each other with our identities in Christ, otherwise we try to draw our identities from our heritage (Jew and Gentile), our gender (man or woman), our pedigree, (has or have nots, slaves or free).
Paul says Jesus is our identity and one of the ways that we really experience that is by casting it on one another, putting it one another: “I see you in Christ.”
“But my flaws and my failures and my hurts?”
“No, no man. I’m gonna see you in Christ, and I want you to see me in Christ.”