12: FISH: New Covenant Identity (Part 6)

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God. Alright. Episode twelve. In the 6th part of our F.I.S.H series, we’re looking at the “I” of F.I.S.H, Identity. We’ll split this topic over two episodes.

Hello, Father.

[00:33] Marcus: Hi, Daughter. Good to be here together again.

[00:35] Stephanie: Always. You know, people associate you with teaching and counseling, and acrostics. What they might not know about you is that you’re a storyteller.

[00:46] Marcus: Yep. We told a lot of stories when you were little.

[00:50] Stephanie: I grew up with elaborate bedtime stories. Princess Stefania of Wales and her adventures, we called them “to be continued stories.”

[00:57] Marcus: Yeah, it gave me an excuse to end when I was tired.

[01:00] Stephanie: Exactly. You could just take it to any point in the story and be like, “To be continued,” and go to bed. And then Ben was born and suddenly Stefania had a little brother named Sir Bopp, and he got to join the adventures. And seriously, these story times were some of the most formative parts of my whole life. I don’t know if I would be a novelist without them. They’re very formative and awesome, so thank you.

[01:24] Marcus: We talked about knights of the old code, right? Those were fun. We had a lot of fun with those. My goal was always to get you to laugh.

[01:33] Stephanie: Yeah. The winding down for bed part wasn’t working.

[01:37] Marcus: No.

[01:39] Stephanie: So I’ve always loved your storytelling. And one of my favorites, which I suppose wasn’t actually a bedtime story, but one that you liked to tell in sermons and such. It was the story of the orphan who gains a new identity. Would you tell that story?

[01:53] Marcus: Yeah, certainly. And I need to give a little credit here to Bob George. His book Classic Christianity told a story that inspired this. And so I kind of picked up with that idea and ran with it and built it out a little bit. But the idea is, imagine you’re like a Charles Dickens kind of orphan, like Oliver Twist. I picture you know, living on the streets of London and life’s hard.

So you get used to bending the law a little bit and maybe shoplifting. As a result you learn how to stay away from the police. But then one day you find out that the king has issued an edict. If you’re an orphan you can go to the courthouse and get a pardon and the police will leave you alone.  So you’re suspicious at first, like, “Uh, that sounds like a trick to get me to go to the courthouse or they’re just going to arrest me.”

But you meet a few other orphans and they show you their pardon. And they tell you the police have actually been leaving them alone. So in a moment of desperation you go down there and sure enough they give you a pardon. You can show that you’re an orphan and you can show that you need this, and they say, “Yeah, you qualify, here it is.”

So you leave there and you’ve got a pardon, you show it to a police officer, and sure enough you’re okay. So the question becomes, is that any incentive to change the way that you live? Right? If you can now in a sense sin but you don’t get in trouble for it anymore cause you’ve been pardoned, then is that an incentive to change the way you live? The answer is no.

The problem here you might be able to see is that this is the way the gospel is often presented. Like, “Come to Jesus he’ll forgive you of all your sins, and you get a free ticket to heaven. Congratulations.” But that’s only half the gospel. So the other half of the gospel is represented in the rest of the story. Let’s suppose then that a rumor starts spreading around the neighborhood that the king is coming. And sure enough the carriages roll in, he’s got footmen, and they come through your neighborhood and they’re calling your name.

Now I think, “Uh oh, that pardon wasn’t good. I’m in trouble or something.” But they find you and they bring you to the king. The first thing you’re doing is looking at his face to read him. Is he upset? Is he angry? But it turns out that he’s happy to see me, and not only is he happy to see me, but he’s beaming. I’m like, “What in the world, does he even know me?”

But here I am, I’m coming into the carriage and he says, “Sit here, sit here I’m so glad they found you.” He said, “I just wanted to let you know I’m so sorry you’ve lost your parents, I actually knew them. And I just want you to know that I’ve had paperwork drawn up and I am adopting you as my son.” And you’re like, “Uh, what, adoption into the royal family?” And he pulls out the parchment and he shows it to you, it’s sealed and it’s all official. And he said, “You are my child.”

The way this works is that my firstborn son is heir of the kingdom and he’s fighting a war right now. When he is done, we’re all going to live in the palace together and you’re going to help rule the kingdom, you’ll be a part of everything. In the meantime, I need you to kind of stay here and represent, represent the family, and represent our interests here in the neighborhood. But know that you are now a prince or in your case, a princess.

So the question becomes, would that be any incentive to change the way you live? If a pardon isn’t, would adoption be? And so I like the way Bob George presented this in his book, Classic Christianity on the “Two halves of the Gospel.” And that has always kind of stuck with me. And so that’s the story but I add an element to it.

So imagine that one day as you’re walking down the street, you hear a voice out of the shadows going, “Who are you kidding, who do you think you are?” I know who you really are, you’re no prince, you’re nothing but a street rat. You’re nothing, you’re Aladdin.” We had to get our Disney reference in, right?

So it’s like, “I know who you really are, who are you kidding?” And at that point I could say, “ Yeah, he’s right. Who am I trying to fool?” I think of it this way as a christian I’m like, “I’m no saint,who am I trying to kid?” “I’m just a worthless person, I’m no good, and nothing’s really changed.” And so if I’m not careful he could get in my head. Even though I am a prince, even though I am a part of God’s family, even though I have been forgiven and even though all of these things are true, I could live as if they’re not. It doesn’t make them untrue.

But I could live as if they’re not true, so that they don’t have any functional benefit to me in the way I live my life. Or I could say, “Hey, you there, in the shadow, step out here for a minute.” “Oh I know you, I remember you and say, “Yeah you’re right, I’m not perfect and there’s a part of my life that I’m not proud of. But I am now a prince and if you talk to me like that again I will let the palace know about you, and you will be in big trouble. So I advise you to leave me alone.”

Call them out and say, “No, this is who I am and this is what I’m going to stand on. This is going to be the foundational way I live.” And I think the devil, if he can’t keep you from becoming a Christian and getting this identity, wants to rob you of that identity. Because the next best thing is to keep you from experiencing the full benefit of it. And so that’s the point of the story.

[07:38] Stephanie: Yeah, I love it. I love it every time you tell it. We talked, I think last episode, about the new covenant and what that is. Do you want to give just a quick definition for a refresh of what it means to be in a new covenant?

[07:54] Marcus: Yeah. So when we die and go to heaven we stand on trial before God, and he opens up the book of all of our deeds. I’m thinking here that he’s got two options, right? And that is he will either evaluate those deeds through the old covenant or through the new covenant. Well, the old covenant is law, so the only thing the old covenant can do is say, “Well, yeah, he’s guilty.” And I know that there are atonement sacrifices in the old covenant, but the blood of bulls and goats can’t take away sin. So that covenant in and of itself leaves me guilty.

I want God to use the new covenant which is the covenant of grace, which says, “Well all of your deeds are now going to be viewed through the lens of the new covenant. Christ paid the penalty for all of this stuff and Christ has redeemed you from all of this. And now the blessings that are yours in Christ come through that.” So the new covenant idea is that the old covenant came through Moses and the new covenant comes through Christ.

So when Paul writes in the New Testament, that I am in Christ and because I am in Christ I have these blessings, you can think of those as terms of the covenant. Like if something is true of me in Christ you could read that as, “Under the new covenant, this is true.” So if I am in Christ I am adopted, then that means a term of the new covenant, under the new covenant I am adopted. Or in Christ I am a saint, that means under the new covenant I am a saint. In Christ I’m pardoned, so all of those things play out.

[09:38] Stephanie: Yeah. I want to look more at this new covenant identity that we remember through your acrostic PACT, P.A.C.T. I think we’ve talked about this briefly before when we talked about extending the bridge diagram. When once you get across the bridge the angelic lawyer hands you the paper, you know. But do you want to give an overview of PACT?

[10:00] Marcus: Yeah. So hopefully PACT you can associate with covenant, a pact and a covenant go together. And so the idea is the new covenant can be remembered with PACT. Now again a tip of the hat to Neil Anderson here. He has done a wonderful job of kind of collating all of the references in the New Testament that have “In Christ” in them. And I think there’s over 30 of them that he has on there that “this is all true of me in Christ.” Problem is I couldn’t remember all 30 of them, at least not quickly or easily. And so I thought, I need a way to explain this quickly to people. What are the essentials of who I am in Christ? And that’s where PACT came from.

So it was the idea of in Christ, I’m pardoned. So that’s the first half of the gospel. It has to do with justification, with redemption, with purification, and with sanctification. All those things that have a part of God dealing with my sin. Okay, so that’s pardon. “A” is adoption. And those are what we talked about in the story, I am now a member of the royal family. It’s changed my identity and my identity is now based in who I am in Christ. And that means that because I’ve been adopted in the family I’m now a co -heir with Christ. It means that there’s authority, it means that I have access, right? A lot of things change because of my adoption.

And then the “C” is citizenship. And this idea that I’m now a “kingdom citizen” which means that I’m not of this world, I’m a stranger here, and I’m a foreigner here. And for me this really helps because I often think of discipleship as changing cultures. And so what I’m doing with discipleship is as I’ve moved from culture “A” to culture “B”, now I have to learn how to think and act? Right? What are the values of culture “B?” So I’ve moved from being a citizen of the world but now I’m a citizen of the kingdom. So I need to learn the worldview of the kingdom, I need to learn the values of the kingdom, and I need to learn “How do we kingdom people do things?” And so my kingdom identity is huge as a citizen of the kingdom, all of that changes, and that’s the “C”.

And then the “T” is that I have a new title. And so I sometimes picture it as “take a knee and dubbing you on each shoulder.” But that title is saint. And so we often point out Paul writing to the church of Corinth which was known for its immaturity and having a lot of issues. He did not write this, ”To you sinners at the church of Corinth, I write.” He wrote, ”To you who are sanctified to you saints at Corinth., I write.” And what that helps us understand is that my new title “Saint”, is who I am. Now that I am a saint, I want to live like it. As opposed to, “If I’m good enough someday I’m hoping I will earn the title saint.” So we look at this and say, “All right, as a Christian I am pardoned, I am adopted, I am a citizen of the kingdom, and I’m a saint.” And that gives us the PACT, or what I think are the four most essential elements of who I am in Christ.

[12:59] Stephanie: That’s so good. I want to stay on title and then I want to go back to adoption briefly. But I love how you flesh out the parallels between the process by which Aaron and his sons were made priests in Leviticus eight, and the way Christians are sanctified as God’s people in Christ.

[13:19] Marcus: Yeah. I think it’s really interesting that it’s always struck me that Aaron did not earn the high priesthood through his good behavior. Right. Because if you think about it, the thing Aaron is best known for is the golden calf. So you’re thinking first of all he did not earn the priesthood, it was given to him as a gift. So there’s a parallel right there.

But then you look at what he does and it walks through that he is first of all cleansed with water, that’s a clear parallel to baptism. He is sprinkled with blood just like we are sprinkled with the blood of the new covenant. He’s anointed with oil just like we’re anointed with the Holy Spirit. He’s given new clothes to wear so it’s like we put on Christ.

He has put on these new garments and he is commissioned to a new calling. This is the calling you received. So Paul tells us, “I urge you as a prisoner for the Lord, live a life worthy of the calling with which you’ve been called.”  Aaron was made a priest that changed his identity. And now on the basis of that new identity he was expected to live a certain way. So in the same way we are given a new identity in Christ, and it follows all of the same patterns that went into becoming a priest. We didn’t earn it, it was given to us and now it’s expected of us to live a life worthy of that.

And if we don’t, then we confess and we move on. Just like the priest every year had to offer a sacrifice for his own sins before he offered sacrifice for the people. So we confess our sins and Jesus is faithful and just to forgive those sins. So I love the parallels there with the priest because it reminds me that my identity in Christ is something given to me, and that God planned this out from the very beginning. This is what he always wanted for me.

[15:15] Stephanie: Very cool. Let’s jump back to adoption now. I think it’s very profound and I have heard you teach this before, in your book, A Deeper Walk, (such a good book) you talk about authority, accountability, affirmation, and acceptance. That the latter so often we flip, could you explain that?

[15:38] Marcus: Yeah, I actually got this from my dad. I remember he would teach this regularly when people would come to him for pastoral counseling kinds of situations. He would write these “A” words in a list on a piece of paper, and it started with authority. God is the authority, “therefore,” then he’d write the word accountability, therefore, we are accountable to God to do what he tells us to do. If we do a good job of being accountable to his authority he will affirm us, and he’d write affirmation as the third word.

And then he said, “If we do a good job of being accountable to his authority and he affirms us, then he will accept us.” And so the idea was that I’m constantly trying to earn God’s acceptance. And he said, “What if I told you that is backwards?” Because most people are nodding their heads like, “Yeah, he’s the authority, I’m accountable to his authority. He’ll affirm me if I do a good job of that, and then maybe that will lead to my acceptance.” And so for me personally I could identify with that, I never knew where I stood with God. You know, have I been good enough?

And he would take this and flip this. He said, “That is law. Law follows that. Authority leads to affirmation, leads to accountability, leads to affirmation, and leads to acceptance.” He said, “Grace flips them.” So Grace says, “You are accepted.” We are accepted in the beloved son and it’s because I’m in Christ that I am accepted.” He said, Now that I am accepted he affirms my worth, he affirms my value, and he affirms who I am. He says, ”You know, this is how I see you. And then he says, “Now I’m asking you to be accountable to my authority because these things are true”. So all of them are still there but it’s so huge to flip that. And I know my dad would tell me stories of sharing that with people who literally started crying, because they realized their whole lives they’d been trying to earn something from God, that he’d already given them.

[17:29] Stephanie: Wow. So in this episode we focused on the scriptural new covenant identity of those who are in Christ. And next episode we’ll look at the brain’s perspective and the relationship between identity, maturity, and attachment. For this episode, do you have any concluding thoughts you would like to leave us with?

[17:47] Marcus: Well you know, identity is such a big, big thing because it has to do with acceptance. And we talk about the ability to have a fear bond with God or a joy bond with God. And I think a lot of what determines whether I have a fear bond with God or a joy bond with God comes back to my identity, and my sense of, where do I stand with God? Is he happy to see me? And so I’m finding if I want to live a victorious christian life it starts with having a God who’s happy to see me.

And that’s the beauty of grace. It’s the beauty of our identity within Christ. I know that even when I have messed up and I come to God with that, he is smiling and thinking, “I’m so glad that he’s bringing this to me right now.” He’s not going, “Oh gosh, he’s done this again?” Because I think a lot of people have the feeling that God has to forgive us because he sort of agreed to it, but it doesn’t mean he likes us. And this is really the corrective of that. Like, no, he’s actually happy to see us even when we mess up, because he knows that he is exactly who we need right now.

[18:52] Stephanie: Yeah. He knows we can’t do it by ourselves, he doesn’t want us to try.

[18:56] Marcus: Right.

[18:56] Stephanie: He wants us to come to him.

[18:58] Marcus: This idea of “go clean yourself up and come back when you’re ready” is just ridiculous. I remember people saying, “You know, if I ever set foot in a church, lightning would probably strike.” And they have this idea that they have to clean themselves up before they come to God. But the reality is that I come to God because I can’t clean myself up. I need him to do this.

[19:16] Stephanie: Yeah. All right. Thank you so much, and thank you all for joining us on the trail today. If you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the Deeper Walk podcast and share with your friends. You can find out more at our website, deeperwalk.com.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.