Knowing who I am

It occurred to me the other day that most of us don’t know who we really are. Yes, we know we are humans with spouses, parents, siblings, and children.  We are also church goers, employees, friends and so on. But, do we really know who we are?

I started thinking about that. I haven’t completely worked it through yet, but felt I could share my initial thoughts. I went through all same things I mentioned above: I am a husband, father, brother, son. I am an engineer and an employee. I am an elder in my church, a choir member, a Christian. When I got to Christian I had to ask myself what that meant. After thinking about that a bit, I came up with the following list.

As a Christian:

    1. I am loved by the creator of the universe.

    2. I am forgiven because Jesus took the consequences of my sins in my place.

    3. I am a child of the King, joint heir to the throne by adoption.

    4. I am a residence for the Holy Spirit, who guides and comforts me.

When I pause and reflect on what these statements say, I am humbled. I mean the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent creator God of the universe loves me. He loves me so much He sent his only son, Jesus Christ, to live on earth and die for me. The death of Jesus paid the atoning price for my sins so I could be clean and able to spend all eternity in Heaven with my heavenly Father. I mean, how awesome is that?

Even more important, I believe, is that through the fact that Christ paid the atonement for my sins, I am his and through him the Father’s. So I not only get to spend eternity with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit; I get to do that as a family member, an heir to the Kingdom by adoption.

So the real question is not “Who am I?”; but “Whose am I?” Once I’ve been able to firmly acknowledge "whose" I am, the answer of who I am will become easier. I think there’s a lot more to this that I haven’t worked through, so I expect to come back to this again.