A few years ago, I was invited to join a big leadership conference. My wife and I were blessed with free ID passes to join the event, but because of schedule problems we were unable to go. A few days before the event, we had dinner with a friend of ours who brought up the topic of that conference and started telling me how much he wanted to go to it. So I decided to give him my pass to the event.
But the problem with my pass was that it already had my name on it, so my friend had to go walking around a conference with my name written over it. He was no longer him at that moment, but when people saw him, he was Patrick Mabilog. Thinking about that instance made me realise this: now that we have received passes into life with God, we wear a new identity; the identity we now have is that of Jesus Christ.
You may have been labelled things before because of your mistakes, failures or sin, but know this today: if you have put your faith in Christ and His finished work, that label put upon you is gone and you now have a new identity in Christ.
2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us, "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (ESV). When you were once determined and defined by your mistakes, now God gives you a new future imputed with the righteousness of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.
That means that you are no longer your old self. The old has passed away and the new has come, as 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us. We now live in a completely new identity founded on Christ's finished work on the cross.
This new identity we have in Christ is fundamental and crucial to living a new life. If we live a life thinking that we are still our old selves, we will remain forever chained to our limitations, our inability, our sinfulness and our brokenness. But when we live in this new identity founded on Jesus, we walk in His ability, His love, His grace and His move.
Just as Paul says in Galatians 2:20a, "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (ESV). We are founded in a new identity, which has brought upon us new destiny and new ability. We walk now with Christ's identity, no longer ours.
