Identity in Christ Part 2: My Speech Manuscript from Church Women's Conference

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I was asked to speak about identity in Christ at the First Baptist Church of Brookline's Women's Conference in October of 2021. I have divided the manuscript for my speech into three parts so that I can share one part at a time (the speech took 45 minutes). In this second part (click for link to part 1), I provided biblical understanding of what it means to be a man and a woman, according to God's design. It is vital that all, men or women, know what it means to have an identity in Christ, and the significance of their God-given gender. I pray that reading this encourages your soul.

...So what does having our identity in Christ look like in our lives? The second chapter of Ephesians tells us what our lives look like before being saved by Christ and what our lives look like after. Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1-3 (Ephesians 2:1-3): “you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience -- among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” So obviously He is talking about who we were and what our lives looked like before Christ. Paul tells us that we followed the power of the air, who is Satan, and that we were children of wrath like everyone else. Some might look at this and say, “Wait a minute, I did not worship and ‘follow’ Satan before I was a Christian! I was just an unsaved sinner doing whatever I wanted to do.” But Paul clearly tells us that living according to the passions of our flesh means that whether or not we are aware of it, we are serving Satan, who desires that we give into our sinful flesh that leads us into hell, as 1 Peter 5:8 tells us “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour”. Such an extreme description of who we were before trusting Christ shows that Paul was not holding back on describing to us the depth of darkness and destruction that awaits those who are enslaved to their flesh. He tells us that the actions of being dead in trespasses and sins means that we carry out the desires of the body and the mind. We did what we desired to do, whatever we treasured, and our treasure was our flesh and sin itself. But Paul continues to tell us who we are now that we are in Christ, and how that has literally turned our lives upside-down. Ephesians chapter 2 starting in verse 4 says:

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ -- by grace you have been saved -- and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

This verse is one of the main reasons why I did not define our identity in Christ as “people who have good works” or “people who pray three times a day and bless every meal”. Notice that good works is one of the last things that Paul mentions in this passage from Ephesians 2. This is certainly not because good works are unimportant, otherwise he would have never mentioned it. Rather, Paul explains to us that this change that happened in our hearts and minds, our desires and words and actions, all of this happened because God’s love and mercy was bestowed on us through Christ. It was entirely His grace that brought us to salvation, and His grace that raised us from death and darkness to life. Notice also in verse 6, Paul says that His grace has also “raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Just as we learned from Colossians 3, Christ is seated at the right hand of God, where the things above are, and here in Ephesians he tells us that we are seated with Him. Not that we will be seated with Him, but he uses past tense, He has “seat-ed” us with Him, Christ, in the heavenly places. Of course, many of us can clearly look around and notice that we are not in heaven or the physical and visible body of Christ is not sitting next to us in our chairs. In Luke 10:20, Jesus tells us to rejoice that our names are written in heaven! So we are both already seated with Him and not-yet seated with Him. A place is already prepared for God’s children in heaven, Christ has already given the promise to all those who are His, and before we know it, the day will come when we will be in heaven, and we will see Him as we are seated with Him. Verse 6 of Ephesians 2 tells us that the reason we have a seat in heaven now is so that he shows us the riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. So that he shows us the greatness of Christ - that we will see what a treasure He is! We will be raised up and seated with Him in heaven, and we rejoice because He is there! We will be with Him, and this is what makes heaven glorious.

Now what does heaven have to do with our identity in Christ in our lives right now? We know that since we are saved by Christ we are going to heaven, so why does Paul talk about heaven in Ephesians right before talking about good works that God has prepared for us as we walk around on earth, the good works that are a part of our Christian lives? It is because as people saved by Christ, our identity is now shaped around our joyful eternity. We live and walk and talk as people who have an eternal purpose. Our lives are no longer about ourselves, our flesh, the momentary pleasures of sinful indulgence that prove fatal in the end like lying, adultery, filthy talk, hate, or envy. When we became alive in Christ, our lives not only became eternal for the life that is to come, but our lives became all about Him. So we live in obedience to Him because we love Him (John 14:15). Our hearts cherish and desire Him because of Him, and the Holy Spirit works within us to bring us to Him. I remember about 5 years ago during a youth group lesson for a Wednesday night at my church, the youth pastor asked us, “If aliens were real and they were watching over the world, knowing absolutely nothing about Christianity, how would they be able to tell that you are different from the world if they saw you on everyday except Wednesdays and Sundays when you are in church? Would they see that you talk and act exactly the same as everyone else? Or would you do things that are completely different, maybe even despised by, the rest of the world? Is the only thing that makes you different the fact that you go to church on Sundays because your parents tell you to?” Now it might have been a weird analogy with aliens creepily looking over me, but this small illustration had a profound impact on my way of thinking. I realized that I was still living as though this life is all there is rather than living as though this is only a preparation for worshiping God in eternity. Specifically for me, one of the things God convicted me with was that I did not know His word as I should, which initiated my determination to read what our God has said everyday so that I would know Him and how to live for Him because that is what I desired, and it is so easy to forget about God when we do not listen to what He has said. This external action, such as reading scripture everyday, is the fruit of a new heart that loves Christ. Do we still sin? Do we still fall pray to our former desires of the flesh, as though we were still children of wrath? Of course, everyone does, and no one can say ever that they have no sin without being a liar as we know from 1 John 1:8. Yet a radical change and transformation has happened within us, we are not yet perfected as we will be in heaven, but the sin that we once treasured is now what we hate. Sin is our old life, and to flee from sin and embrace the righteousness of Christ, we live each day dependent on the grace of God, knowing that we need His grace more than we know for everything we do and for everything we mess up.

The several days that followed after the conversation with my dad that God used to save me were first full of grief and pleading for God’s forgiveness, but then the burden was lifted, and I had never felt so free. The despair I felt from sin was no longer met with even more despair and hopelessness, but hope in forgiveness and thankfulness in the finished work of Christ. As 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17 says, “therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” When God transforms our hearts from stone to flesh through His spirit put within us, we are finally given reason to hope and rejoice because we no longer have to look for those things in ourselves to our death, but we are given new lives as we realize that all riches of joy and hope come from Christ, who has given us the love that we do not deserve, but His grace has saved us.

So we have looked at what it means to have an identity in Christ, and now I would like to talk about what this means for our identity as women in Christ. As Elisabeth Elliot says “the fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian makes me a different kind of woman,” so I do not want to make it seem as though by being women we are put into a separate Christian sphere than men, as if there is a bubble of Christian women over here in heaven and a bubble for Christian men over there in heaven. No, we are all made together alive in Christ. But being a woman is part of our identity on a spiritual level. Genesis 5:1-2 says “When God created man, He made Him in the likeness of God. Male and female He created them, and He blessed them and named them Man when they were created.” Manhood and womanhood is a part of our humanity and is made distinct in His creation. Even when we are in our glorified physical bodies in heaven, we can assume that we will not become genderless human beings. No, we will be in heaven in the gendered bodies that we have right now, but we will be resurrected and perfected bodies in Christ (Philippians 3:20-21). Pastor and author Ben Patterson comments on the importance of this aspect in our identity, “The hormones are part of it, but they are [secondary] to the center, which is that we are differentiated as male and female. Apart from this basic differentiation, we cannot be understood as human beings”.¹ In a world that has perhaps never been so confused about manhood and womanhood, believing that it does not matter, that these identities do not exist, or that we can change them based on how we feel about ourselves rather than the reality in which God made us, I hope it will only be helpful and encouraging to remind ourselves of what it means to be made in the image of God as women, and how having our identity in Christ transforms us into different women.

From the beginning of high school until just a few months ago, I struggled to understand what exactly it means to be a woman. I knew that it mattered, but I could not explain why. Specifically, I wanted to know how I could understand my womanhood through the bible. What part does Christ play in defining gender? I cannot recall how many sermons and podcasts about womanhood that I listened to, articles and books that I read, or friends and family that I heard from, but I was running into a dilemma every single time, which was that everything I heard and read about the purpose of womanhood was in the context of marriage. As we know from Ephesians 5, the husband is the symbol of Christ and the wife is the symbol of the church. The thing is that I am not married, yet I have been a living woman for 20 years, and many of my female friends of all different ages are also not married. So is my purpose not fulfilled until I get married and become a wife? A few months ago I was watching a video about gender made by a seminary with my fiance, Denver, and we were disturbed when one of the main speakers said that the highest calling for a woman is to be a wife and mother. We were not disturbed because we disagreed that it is a high calling for women to be wives and mothers, something that our culture frowns upon, but are the women who never marry, who do not have children or are unable to have children, “lesser” women? Do single women fall short from their call to womanhood, never attaining their purpose if they remain single? The resources that I had studied would usually appeal to the single woman as well, but always in the general sense, referring to Paul talking about the blessing of singleness in 1 Corinthians, that it is okay to be single and that our purpose in life is to serve Christ. Of course, these are biblically correct teachings, and to deny that singleness is okay or that we should not give our lives to Christ would be false. But still the question remains, what does it mean for me to be a woman? Yes, the bible shows that the duty of the wife is to serve and submit to her husband who leads her, but what about women like me who are not wives? Yes, single women are still women and should give their lives to Christ, but every person, male or female, married or unmarried, is supposed to give their lives to Christ. I do not think we can say that the very core of womanhood itself is to be a wife and mother if it cannot apply to all women as they are made. We become women as soon as we come out of our mother’s womb, and we are not working to some mystical stage of enlightenment in which we will fulfill our womanhood. If our conclusion, then, is that the only ultimate difference between men and women is a matter of sexual organs and the ratio of specific sexual hormones, that our identity as women is purely physical and physiological with no connection to our spiritual selves and no God-given reason for why He made us different from men other than to have children, then we have no supported reason for saying that the rise of gender confusion and transgender ideas causes not only bodily harm but also causes people to embrace a celebration of unnatural and sinful desires that leads them straight to their eternal destruction. So we know that there must be something more to our womanhood. Indeed, God has a divine reason for making man and woman in the image of His likeness. These questions only increased for me as I studied more and more because everything pointed to womanhood in something I did not have or in something that both men and women have. I was not struggling with my gender, but I was in turmoil of why it mattered. It was not until a few months ago that I read a book called “What’s the Difference” by theologian and former pastor John Piper. In it, I was provided with very clear and biblically-founded definitions of what it means to be a man or a woman. The only reason I believe these definitions to be true is because I see them reflected in the bible as well as the natural design of men and women, for the counsel and wisdom that is based merely on lofty personal preferences and opinions should be discarded as the wisdom of man, not God. So I would like to provide you with both definitions because we cannot understand who we are as women without knowing who men are as men. This distinction is how God made us, and we are complementary to one another, as women were taken from the rib of a man who was made from dust, but we were both made in the image of God.

This is a biblical definition of masculinity:

“At the heart of mature masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for, and protect women in ways appropriate to a man’s differing relationships.” ²

This is a biblical definition of femininity:

“At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships.” ²

If you do not see this distinction between men and women, or any necessary distinction at all, I would encourage you to give an honest reading to the scripture for yourself and see what it says about manhood and womanhood. There has been an entire textbook-sized book called “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” written by theologians that addresses the details in 600 pages, so if you want to know more you could go there too. But again, the reason that I wanted to bring up these statements of what manhood and womanhood are is because it is a part of who we are and influences us on a deeply spiritual level. God has made us to compliment one another, so that men are made to lead, protect, and provide, and women are made to encourage, receive, and care for these leading and providing men. However, our culture sees this as degrading and offensive to women, and there are even many Christian women who do not want to accept that the bible teaches this. This is the result of a culture moving towards rejecting the idea of absolute truth, that everything was made with purpose and intention, and that there is no such thing as natural and unnatural because everything is determined by personal choice and ever-changing desire.

But we will never have freedom or power in going against the design God has made for us. See, this design was created for the good of humanity. Man and woman are made in harmony with one another, and we are equal in the eyes of God. It is a reflection of the bigger picture: the masculine representation of God, who is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit with the feminine representation of the church. It is a symbol that becomes intimate and understandable through the marriage of a man and a woman, yet it applies to all men and women in other contexts in varying and non-sexual degrees. It is not a lingering oppressive and historical idea that causes men to feel a weight of protection and provision for women but a natural desire God has given them. It is not that women are weak and frail and are incapable of defending themselves or any form of independence. In fact, the woman in Proverbs 31 is strong, hardworking, intelligent, caring, and very capable. When God made the first man, He saw that it was not good for Adam to be alone. Adam needed Eve in the same way that men need the help of women in His design, likewise, women need men according to His design and as a symbolic reflection of Christ and the church. It was not for frivolous and extra chores that God gave Eve to Adam as a helper - so that she could just feel like she was helping. No, the leadership and provision of manhood would not thrive without womanhood. We are both equally necessary in God’s design, and the role God has given us as women is only distorted and frowned upon when sin enters the picture, making us feel that we have to take on the exact same role of men in order to have true purpose or to be valuable. Yet we do not have to go against design and try to be men. We are free to be who we were meant to be in God’s design as daughters precious to Him.

References

1. Patterson, Ben. “The Goodness of Sex and the Glory of God.” Sex and the Supremacy of Christ, edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor. Crossway Books, 2005, p. 56.

2. Piper, John. What’s the Difference?: Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible. Crossway, 1990.