Who We Are (Romans 6)
This Sunday I get to preach at The Journey, a great church in Muskegon, Michigan. I’ll be opening the series they’re doing through my book, which means I’ll be talking about our identity in Christ. I think that’s something not spoken on nearly enough in churches, and today’s reading (Romans 6) makes its importance clear.
This chapter features this huge battle: Will we live as slaves to righteousness or sin? And a bunch of things I would expect to be mentioned (trying hard to do right, praying for God’s strength, reading our Bibles, the importance of community and accountability) are not mentioned. What is mentioned, repeatedly, is the idea of identity. That the key to our victory is understanding who we are. “Don’t you know what happened to you, and who you became, when you were baptized?” “Don’t you know who are now, who you offered to become a slave to?”
The reality is: We will live out who we believe we are. So we need to know and remind ourselves constantly of who we are. And we pastors need to continually teach our people about their identity in Christ.