Who Are You

read›
Job 1:1
He said, “I came naked from my mother’s womb, and I will be naked when
I leave. The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away.
Praise the name of the Lord!” (v.21).

Charles Taylor has a big ego. The former president
of Liberia once attended an African conference
in full combat gear, riding into town as his armed
bodyguards jogged alongside his car. When he was
accused of being a gunrunner and diamond smuggler,
Taylor shamelessly addressed his people clothed in
angelic white. But Taylor’s atrocities finally caught up
with him and he was put on trial in The Hague for crimes
against humanity. Alone, separated from companions,
cash, and clout, Taylor now confronts the question of his
identity. Who is he really?

Many of us know the feeling. From the moment we’re
born, we slowly accumulate the people, possessions,
and skills that form our identity. We’re someone’s child
and sibling, and we eventually become someone’s
friend, spouse, parent, and employee. But then we’re laid
off from work or we lose a loved one through death or
divorce, and we’re not sure who we are anymore.
Such tragic losses are a prelude to the main event.
Someday we will die, and then “we must all stand before
Christ to be judged” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Stripped of
everything that shaped our identity, the question of the
moment will be, “Who are you?”

The only answer that will do, as the Heidelberg
Catechism declares, is that “I am not my own, but
belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my
faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” The only relationship that death can’t sever is the
most important one. Paul exclaimed that “anyone who belongs to Christ has
become a new person” (2 Cor. 5:17), and we who “are united with Christ”
receive “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 1:3).
When Jesus asks who you are, reply that you find yourself in Him.
—Mike Wittmer

more›
Read Philippians 3:7
to learn how Paul found
his identity in Jesus.

next›
What does it mean to
find your identity in Jesus?
How can your identity
in Him steady you when
your world is rocked by
unemployment, divorce,
death?