Stop Trying—Receive Your Real IdentitySample

Day 4—Losing to Find

Jesus asked a powerful and probing question to His disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” 

He wasn’t asking for His own benefit. Jesus’ questions are always rhetorical—meant for the instruction of the follower. He knows His disciples have a flawed view of Him, and therefore a flawed view of themselves. And He also knows that once they truly and fully understand Who He really is and what He came to accomplish, that knowledge would deeply, completely, and permanently redefine them. They would never be the same.

After hearing their answer, “… the Christ of God,” He proceeded to teach them about His soon coming death, resurrection, and their call to follow. He taught them that whoever would seek to save his life (identity) would only lose it, but whoever loses his life (identity) to Jesus will actually save it (or find it.) 

Jesus was referring to our inner being, or our “sense of self.” His identity invitation sums up like this: Lose your deepest psyche (your self) to me. Let Me provide your truest, strongest self. Lose to Me what you’re going to lose regardless, and let Me replace it with that which you can never find on your own, and can never lose again!

The identity we build and protect will always be lost. But the new self Jesus provides is unlosable, durable, and deeply redefining. This self is “who my Creator says I am.” It stops looking horizontally (others define me) or internally (I define me) and begins looking up—Jesus defines me.

This is the only durable identity. It is given by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8-9). It confers upon us all of God’s favor and forgiveness. It calls us His adopted children, and grants us His unconditional and unlosable love. This is the sense of self our hearts most deeply long to discover, and it can only be received as a gift from Jesus.