Imagine I handed you an index card and asked you to answer one question in a single sentence: Who am I?
What would you write? Don’t overthink it, just write the first sentence that comes to mind.
I’ve done this exercise with groups enough times to know what usually comes back. Most answers fall into one of three buckets: what we do (“I’m an athlete,” “I’m a student,” “I am a father,” “I am a business owner”), what we have (“I’m wealthy,” “I’m broke”), or who we’re around (“I’m so-and-so’s kid,” “I’m part of this group”). That’s the default operating system for identity in our culture. We are what we do, what we have, or who we associate with.
The problem is that all three of those foundations move. Your performance ebbs and flows. Your possessions come and go. Your people change. If your identity is built on any of them, your sense of who you are is going to be shaking constantly, because the ground under it never stops shifting.
Here’s what makes a disciple of Jesus different from everyone else operating on that default system: our identity doesn’t come from the things of this world. It comes from Jesus.
Paul puts it this way in Galatians 2:20:
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
There is a lot of good news in this one sentence. I want to pull out three things it teaches us about gospel identity.
1. “I have been crucified with Christ” – my mistakes don’t define me. Jesus does.
We all have a list of things we regret, ways we’ve let people down, choices we’d take back if we could. And if we’re honest, we know that will probably grow the longer we live. We are human. And humans are sinners.
Here’s the good news: when Jesus was crucified, he died in your place. He paid for all of it – past, present, and future. Scripture says God removes our sins “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12). Your sins are not just forgiven, but gone, buried, never coming back. Not because you finally got it together, but because of what Jesus did. Your worst moment is not the truest thing about you. Jesus is.
2. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” – my purpose isn’t mine to discover. Jesus gives it to me.
There’s a lot of pressure in the idea that you have to go find your purpose out there somewhere, like it’s buried treasure only you can locate. That search can consume years of a person’s life and still come up empty.
The gospel offers something different – you don’t have to discover your purpose, because Jesus gives it to you. You live for him, and that shows up in hundreds of ordinary ways, at work, at home, in the community, in a friendship. He works through whatever season you’re in.
That also means your identity can survive change. Interests shift. Seasons end. I played basketball all through high school, and when it ended, I remember feeling genuinely lost – like a piece of who I was had just been taken off the table. If your identity is tied to something you do, losing that thing feels like losing yourself. But if your identity is Christ living in you, you can walk into a new season and still know exactly who you are. That’s real freedom.
3. “I live by faith in the Son of God” – I’m not defined by the world’s stories or the lies I’m told about myself.
Ephesians 4:14 compares the world we live in to a beach, but not the relaxing kind, a beach with a strong current and crashing waves. When you wade into the waves, they pull you away from where you started before you even notice. Leave something unanchored in the wind, and it gets carried off like a plastic bag.
That’s what the noise and messages of our culture do to us. Left unanchored, the algorithms on your phone will move you further from the truth without you ever feeling the pull happen.
Faith is the anchor. Not faith as a vague feeling, but faith in a specific fact: he loved me and gave himself for me. When the lies come, and they will, that’s the fact you plant your feet on.
Try the index card exercise again, but this time answer it from Galatians 2:20 instead of the default script. Not what do I do, have, or belong to — but who has Jesus said I am.
