Identify Yourself

I served in the United States Military for 6 six years as a Security Forces member in the Air Force. During that time I was deployed to the border of Saudi Arabia and Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2002-2003. I was stationed at a base which functioned as a staging point for all of the B-1 Bomber airstrikes. My job was to guard and protect this base, its vital assets and the personnel contained within. I often found myself guarding gates at the various base entry points and serving as the filter for who had authorization to come in and go out. On a daily basis, my fellow workers and I faced the very real threat of suicide bombers, covert enemy operatives and a plethora of other potentially hostile visitors who could present themselves as indistinguishable from the very people who were authorized to be inside the base. Our job was to ensure that every person who attempted to enter the base properly identified themselves, proving that they were friendly and authorized to be there. As people properly identified themselves as being “on our side” and “part of our team” we would allow them access to our base.

Reflecting on this experience has led me to see some parallels in the way we, as christians, attempt to reach people who don’t know Jesus Christ with the message of the Gospel. What I often see are christians and churches whose primary strategy is to take a posture of “identifying themselves” with the people they are trying to reach in an effort to win them over to God’s side. The driving force behind this strategy is a belief that people won’t listen to what we have to say or care what we believe unless we can first prove that we really understand and “identify” with who they are. In an effort to do this we go out of our way to prove that we are not so different than them. We come from similar backgrounds, like many of the same things, commit many of the same sins, share many of the same mistakes, etc…In some cases we do such a good job of “identifying” with people that we leave them with the impression that we are…just like them.

Is something wrong with this picture? While we succeed in making people more comfortable with us, willing to accept us, and perhaps even join us, have we lost sight of who we were made to be by Jesus in the first place? As we have so successfully identified ourselves with people, have we failed to identify ourselves with the God we call Lord and Supreme Master of our lives?

Let’s take a minute and define what it means to “identify with” someone or something. Macmillan dictionary defines “identify with” as: “demonstrating that you understand and share someone else’s feelings; to consider someone and be involved and connected with their group and opinion; to demonstrate same-ness with someone or something.”

I would like to suggest that it is impossible to do the above with both people and God. The more we share the same feelings as, get involved and connected with the group and opinion of and demonstrate same-ness with one, the less so we will with the other. God puts it like this in the Bible:

“You [are like] unfaithful wives [having illicit love affairs with the world and breaking your marriage vow to God]! Do you not know that being the world’s friend is being God’s enemy? So whoever chooses to be a friend of the world takes his stand as an enemy of God.”                       –James 4:4 (AMP)

Coming to Christ is a radical departure from our previous way of thinking, living, being, and believing. It is a top to bottom tear down and rebuild of our entire lives. The apostle Paul writes:

“Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!”                                   –2 Corinthians 5:17 (AMP)

God tells His people:

“So, come out from among [unbelievers], and separate (sever) yourselves from them, says the Lord, and touch not [any] unclean thing; then I will receive you kindly and treat you with favor,” –2 Corinthians 6:17 (AMP)

What God is saying is, “I want You to identify yourself with Me!” God’s plan is to take a people created in His image and impart His nature through His grace into them and cause them to be different, peculiar, and other-worldly. God’s people are to stand in stark contrast to the world around them and serve as bright shining sign posts pointing to the life-changing, world-altering love and power of a God who went all out to rescue us from ourselves. God came to us in Jesus Christ, but He didn’t live like us or try to focus on the things that made Him the “same” as other people. He drew their attention to a different way to live all together and demonstrated what a life could be like when it is completely submitted to God. Jesus wasn’t like anyone else who ever lived and yet multitudes followed Him.

I’m here to suggest that what a hurting and lost world needs is not more of the same, but rather something radically different. People need to see that God radically and permanently changes lives and empowers people to live beyond their natural ability. Does this mean that we isolate ourselves and make ourselves irrelevant to the world around us? Absolutely not! What it does mean is we have to make a clear decision who or what we want to show the world we are most like. Is it them or the God who saved and transformed us? Paul puts it like this:

“Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!”                                      –1 Corinthians 9:19-23 (MSG)

Paul served people and entered into their lives without feeling the burden to prove that he was like them. In fact, his goal was to show what God was like. When we walk with God we will be able to show people what He is like because we are becoming like Him.

“In this way, love has been perfected among us, so that we may have confidence on the day of judgment; for in this world we are just like Him.” –1 John 4:17 (BSB)

Ultimately, whoever you identify with, you are submitting to being changed by and making moves toward. So, lets wrap this up by taking it back to my time in the military. The only people who made it through the front gate of our base were those who were clearly on our team. Someone opposed to our cause would be foolish to come try to “identify themselves” at the front gate, as they would be shot on sight. An opposing force would use strategy and stealth to try to sneak in another way. Likewise, if our military were to try to rescue prisoners of war from an enemy camp, we wouldn’t drive up to the front gate and try to tell them, “we are just like you”. We would come at night, break in, and rescue those captives without asking for permission or trying to prove anything.

We aren’t called to go in the front door of the enemy’s camp by permission from him either. We have been empowered to trample the gates of hell with the love and power of God, demonstrated clearly in our lives due to our identification with Jesus Christ and our resemblance of Him. It’s not our “same-ness” but rather our “other-ness” that the lost in the world need to see. Let’s be wholly and “holy” different because we identify with the One whose ways are higher and whose divine nature makes all things possible in and through those who love and follow Him.