IDENTITY WHAT IS IT?

There is a great need today to know who we are, the purpose of our lives, our calling in God and the assurance that we are walking in God’s will. Many people experience the touch of God in their lives, but they still do not know who they are even with that touch. If we do not know ourselves, we live in a make-believe world. We think we know ourselves because we know things about ourselves. Knowing as God wants us to know Him and the move of His Spirit is different from the assessment of facts, evidence and circumstances that our human mind calculates as knowledge.

Adam and Eve knew God and they reflected the experience of that knowledge in their countenance and image. They were created in the likeness of God, and they knew that they were created in His image for the purpose of fellowshipping with Him in Paradise. “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created he him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

Because they knew God and knew themselves, they understood their purpose upon the earth. “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful, and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over …” (Genesis 1:28) They did not have to search for their identity because they walked with their identity, they talked with Him, and they heard and understood His voice. Because they knew their identity, they knew themselves. Did the perfect creation of God know that they had their life, source, protection and purpose from God? And if tested, would their fidelity fail because they would rely on their human understanding of a divine relationship? What follows is the test of a created man and his first identity crisis!

“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:17) “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; …” (Genesis 3:6,7)

Suddenly, as they had to make a decision of love towards their Creator, the situation caused them to realize things about themselves they had never experienced before. What would be their criterion for making a decision like this one? They used their senses to make a spiritual decision. Their covering was rent from them, and suddenly the knowledge they had acquired through their senses, awakened within them a fallen ability to know about things, people and places without actually knowing as God knows these things in relation to Him.

They experienced the reality of being naked without God as their covering. This knowledge was not even necessary for them to have up to this point because their nakedness was covered by God, but now they would have to do something about their human condition of nakedness.

Next, began the process of death. The curse upon them for eating from the tree of knowledge was death in the full sense of the human trinity - body, soul and spirit. Immediately, a part of their spirit experienced death because it had cut itself off from the source of life – God. The trinity of man works in the unity just as the Godhead does, and when the Spirit of man experiences death, it follows that the soul and body will also experience death and the effects of death. As this death to the inner man occurred through seeking this knowledge, they in fact cut themselves off from their identity. They realized this vacancy, now, as their eyes no longer had a heavenly vision to behold, but saw only an outward, naked flesh.

Jesus’ life set man’s eyes again in the direction of his Source. This is why Jesus said in (Matthew 6:33), ”But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”

To seek the Kingdom is to seek an inner identity with God in order to establish a new set of values so that the added things will not rule and ruin our lives. Instead, we will have the power to control them because of this inner communion with God.

In His Love,
      Sigi

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