Who We Are and Whose We Are

The Fundamental Needs of All Human Beings

Today's writing is a lesson on our sense of identity and belonging, both fundamental needs of all human beings. We will examine how God has made many provisions in Christ to satisfy our hunger and thirst to belong and to be seen as valuable and loved. 

The Scripture passage for this lesson is found at Christ's baptism in the River Jordan. At this event, the Father declares Him His Beloved Son. 

As we will see, we have no purpose, value, or belonging apart from the living God who made us. The key to finding all we need is to be in a relationship with His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, and to follow Him. 

Let us continue with the Bible text about baptism and see how it applies to us personally. 

When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” 

— Matthew 3:16

Death and Resurrection

Baptism is about surrendering to God by dying to the old, aimless, sinful person we were. Immersing ourselves in the waters symbolizes our death and burial, and rising from those waters to become a new creature in Christ brings us into a right relationship with God and into belonging to Him.

... we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 

— Romans 6:4

When we surrender our lives to Christ, "the heavens are opened." All of God's resources in heaven are made available to us, enabling us to live a life of godliness by knowing who we are. 

... His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. 

— 2 Peter 1:1-4

Francesca Ferrito

Identity and Position

The baptism experience shows how the Father blesses the Son with His approval and reminds Him of His identity, a reminder that will be pivotal to His next experience. When we surrender and immerse (baptize) ourselves in Him and His ways, we are blessed with the Father's approval and discover that He is pleased with us and that we are His, not because of what we have done but because of what Jesus did. This revelation will be pivotal as we journey through this life's wilderness. 

Right after His baptism, as recorded in Matthew chapter four, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tested. The devil's first question to Jesus relates to what God had just spoken over His life. Satan asks the following.

"If you are the Son of God, command the stone to be turned into bread." 

The devil attacks His identity (This is my beloved Son) and His position with God (in whom I am well pleased). If Jesus in any way doubted who He was, that God was pleased with Him, or that God alone was enough for Him (more to Him than even the food He so desperately needed), He would have succumbed to the temptation. So it is with us. The Word comes, and so does the test. 

The first temptation in the garden was directed at the appetite for "self" satisfaction rather than God-satisfaction. Appetite can mean so much more than mere food. Adam and Eve had forgotten who they were, children of God who had everything they could ever need or want in the palm of His hand. Their disobedience said more than words could about what they believed God thought of them. They could just as well have called Him a stingy, manipulative, uncaring Father with no interest in their well-being or success. 

We can scoff at them all we want, but that same mentality is resident within us all. I was watching my granddaughters play the other day, and I gave them some toys to play with. I noticed they most often wanted the toy farthest from their reach, or the thing (not a toy) they couldn't have. Isn't that how we are sometimes? We often want what we cannot have, even as remarkable things sit right in front of us. 

The key to overcoming temptation is knowing our identity and position with the only one in the universe who matters and valuing this relationship above all else. 

God created man in His own image. Adam saw himself in God's eyes, and the reflection he saw was like God. He could see he was like Him. When the devil diverted Adam and Eve's attention and convinced them to surrender to the temptation, the image became corrupted, and a significant distortion took place. They now saw God misrepresented and themselves reflected in the eyes of his new evil master. 

We tend to become like the things or people we look at most intently.

Those who make them are like them;
So is everyone who trusts in them.

— Psalm 115:8

 As it refers to the idol images the people worshiped, this verse reveals that we become like what and whom we trust. Jesus came to show us the Father and to restore our identity and position with Him.

“If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.” Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.”Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

— John 14:7-9

Christ Our Only Source 

God aimed to clear the distortion by forgiving our sins through Jesus's death on the cross. The intention was that our vision could and would be restored. The first and foremost restoration concerned our ability to see God's goodness and greatness; secondly, our ability to see ourselves in His eyes as a child with whom He is well pleased. 

One of the greatest individual battles is to be convinced that we are loved, and I think the greatest disappointment for some is that no person or circumstance can convince them of that. It is never enough, only because we seek it from natural human resources that can never satisfy. I believe Philip knew this when he told Jesus they would be satisfied if He showed them "The Father."

For God to be God, He has to be the only opinion of us that truly matters. Our confidence and good feelings about our lives and ourselves should only be found in Him. When we know the Creator of the universe loves us, no one can take that away, no matter how we are treated. 

Only one person can satisfy the longing of our hearts. And there is only one way to know that we are valued and our lives matter. And that person is Jesus, God's only Son, who found us worthwhile enough to leave the comfort of His heavenly home and the presence of His Father, to be beaten and hung on a cross to remove our sin-stained perceptions so we could know just how much "The Father" truly loves us. 

Until we see this truth, we will keep trying to manipulate the physical world around us (people and things) by begging and demanding that it convince us we are of value. All the while, we end up in places that confirm what we fear the most because they are not God and have no means to erase our crimes nor the crimes committed against us: "Nothing but the blood of Jesus."

Put God first. If we do not see Him correctly, we will not see ourselves accurately.

God has spoken something over each of our lives about who we are and whose we are. As Jacob wrestled with God one night and would not let Him go until He blessed him, so it must be with us. We need to wrestle with God and not let Him go until we are convinced of how deeply loved we are, so that no other opinion or circumstance matters, and to immerse ourselves in this truth. We then become a mission to serve, love, and convince others of His transforming love with the open provisions of heaven.

© 2010 Tamarajo