70: Identity in Christ

[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. Season 1, episode 70. Today we are wrapping up this identity series.

Hello, my father.

[00:28] Marcus: Hello, Daughter.

[00:29] Stephanie: You’ve been looking forward to this episode.

[00:31] Marcus: I don’t know why the number 70 is like, hey that’s cool, we made it.

[00:36] Stephanie: Yay, 70! It’s a good number.

[00:44] Marcus: I noticed you’re not in Scotland, by the way.  We are pre-recording this.

[00:50] Stephanie: I’m unfortunately not live from Scotland. Yeah, no, but hopefully I am enjoying that. I’m sure I am. Woot! So our icebreaker here is, a listener wants to know – have either one of you raked a bunch of leaves together and then jumped in them?

[01:10] Marcus: Yes. The short answer, yes. I have raked a bunch of leaves together and jumped into them. I used to do it as a kid. I remember very vividly doing that as a little kid. How about you? Do you remember doing that?

[01:21] Stephanie: I don’t remember doing it honestly. When I think about raking leaves I think of going to a teacher’s house who is a friend of mine and helping her rake her property. And then having the worst joint pain I had ever had in my life. Being like, what is wrong with me? I’m dying. But it was still a good memory despite the memory of pain. It was fun to rake the leaves with my teacher, but I don’t actually remember jumping in them or anything.

[01:48] Marcus: Yeah, I know. I kind of dropped the ball on that one. Part of it is we just didn’t have big trees in our yard I think.

[01:54] Stephanie: But I’ve always enjoyed the leaves and I’ve always enjoyed crunching them with my boots as I’m walking. But no, I don’t think I’ve jumped in them.

[02:05] Marcus: But honestly, I think I did it like twice a month. This is overrated.

[02:09] Stephanie: Maybe you didn’t get a big enough pile of leaves.

[02:12] Marcus: I don’t know. Maybe.

[02:13] Stephanie: I think I have jumped into a pile of snow before, which is fun.

[02:18] Marcus: That is fun.

[02:19] Marcus: Making the angels.

[02:22] Stephanie: All right, we are talking about identity not for the last time, but for the last time in this series. And today we’re going to reconnect identity as a topic to its gospel foundations, and then we can review how it all fits together again. So, Father, take us away.

[02:46] Marcus: Sure. Often I like to tell people the gospel isn’t just like, here’s your ticket to eternal life. Sometimes it’s presented that way. It’s like the gospel message is do you want eternal life, yes or no? And I’m like, there is much more to the gospel than do you want to live forever, or do you want to go to hell?

If that’s your understanding of the gospel, then it’s completely inadequate. So what we understand is that the gospel is far more than just the gift of eternal life. It is the foundation for discipleship. And when we unpack that foundation it takes us to this baptismal image. I had a pastor friend who for years talked about our identity as our baptismal identity. I like that term because my baptismal identity brings me back to the fact that my identity is anchored in the fact that the old me died with Christ.

And because the old me died with Christ that person no longer lives. Well, that’s an identity statement, right? If I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, that means the old me died. There’s a new identity that is set there and I have been raised with Christ. That’s an identity statement. I am a risen person. I am now in Christ. I am no longer in Adam under law. I am in Christ under grace. This is the identity. And now I am born of the spirit, which is also an identity statement.

So all of these things tie together. So we summarized this gospel presentation with FISH. The F of FISH is freedom. The first thing that happens at baptism is we go under the water. And no matter how that happens, the image here is that I have died with Christ. And Paul’s very clear about this in the book of Romans, and that because we’ve died the law has no more claim on us, and sin has no more claim on us.

And he uses the word freedom. He uses the Greek word there that you have been set free. So I’ve been set free from the law and I’ve been set free from sin. Both of those things are important because my freedom from the law doesn’t mean that I now have license to do whatever I want. My freedom from the law means it can’t condemn me anymore. There’s no more measuring stick up there saying, you have fallen short, you have failed. You are guilty, guilty, guilty.

[05:19] Stephanie: Smite.

[05:20] Marcus: Right? There’s no more smite button. Okay, so that’s been removed and thus, I am not under law, I am under grace. There is also this idea that I’m not under sin and that sin is no longer my master. And Paul’s very clear because sin isn’t my master I shouldn’t let sin reign over me. It’s like, you have been set free from this master so don’t let it reign over you. And he also implies that we have died to death itself. Death doesn’t reign over us anymore. We now have eternal life.

So we should live as those who are living for eternity and storing up treasures in heaven and so on. So that first idea that we have died with Christ Paul clearly connects it to the idea of freedom. That it was for freedom, that God did all this for us. In fact, I think the whole gospel message can be summed up as a freedom message. We were enslaved to sin. It’s like the classic fairy tale of the princess in the castle getting guarded by the dragon and the heroic knight Jesus came and slayed the dragon to set us free.

And then not only set us free but invited us into a marriage. And now all of a sudden, here we are, and the whole world has opened up to us. Now we get to go on an adventure with him. I think that’s core to what the gospel is all about: that God came to set us free and Christ came to destroy all the works of the evil one.

[06:52] Stephanie: That’s a fun story.

[06:53] Marcus: Yeah. So there we go, that’s the gospel. And then we are raised to a new identity. And that’s where we’ve camped out on this series is the new identity to which we have been called and to which we’ve been raised. And so we started by talking about how God designed the brain to form identity which is interesting because honestly, somewhat unfairly, a lot of us have bad childhoods. There’s a lot of people who didn’t get great parents and they got abused, and they got a whole bunch of things they missed out on. And a whole bunch of bad things that happened to them and they’re like, well, I’m not starting with the same foundation in life that you are, how is that fair? And the answer is, it’s not fair.

But part of what God is doing in bringing Jesus is he came specifically with the brokenhearted in mind, specifically with the enslaved in mind, specifically for those people for whom life has not been fair, and that’s where his heart was. It’s like God’s saying, I want to redeem all of that. I want to transform all of that and I want to give you a new identity. I want to give you a new life. I want to provide for you everything that you need. And so he gives it all to us in Christ.

So going back to the attachment ideas because some of us don’t get that. If I did not get what I needed from my mom, my dad or from my extended family growing up, I didn’t have joy in my family, and I didn’t have joy in being who I was. If I had abuse on top of that, the combination of that one two punch of not getting the good I needed, and then actually getting bad stuff does horrendous damage to my sense of self.

Now, correcting that, it is not enough just to tell somebody these things are true about you in Christ. Just telling people that if they don’t have the capacity to even live with a coherent identity, isn’t going to fix it. It’s not that it’s not true, it’s just that it isn’t the complete fix to what they need. There’s going to have to be some repair to their brain’s ability to even think about themselves because of the damage that happened growing up. So part of that repair is that there are some objective truths against which they can measure things.

Like, no matter how I feel about myself, the Bible is telling me that the truth is that I’m deeply loved. That God delights in me and that he smiles when he thinks about me. The Bible’s giving me some objective stuff so that I can look over here and say, even though I feel this way because of my childhood, and even though I feel this way because of how I was treated in school or whatever, I can know that this is true.

And so it gives me an anchor point to build around. This is one of the reasons why we stress identity so much. Because one of the devil’s core strategies in life is to take us out of the battle by lying to us about our true identity, so that we live less than what we could be. Yeah, so all those things go into it. Obviously, I could go on.

[10:10] Stephanie: Oh, obviously, very good stuff. We can circle back around to identity again. Do you want to go on to Spirit?

[10:17] Marcus: So the S of FISH. Freedom, identity, Spirit, again reinforces the first two things. I’m born of the spirit to walk in the Spirit. Well, what does the Spirit want me to do? The Spirit is going to always lead me into greater freedom. This where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. One of the ways that you can tell and you can discern, is this the work of the Holy Spirit or not? Is it leading me into greater freedom or not? And if it is not leading me into greater freedom, again, we have to be careful here because this is not freedom to sin. It is freedom from sin that we’re talking about, that’s a very different thing. It’s like the Bible never sets us free to sin. Like, okay, you’re now free to sin all that you want. It’s saying, no, sin shouldn’t be your master anymore, don’t be a slave to that anymore. You’re being set free from it.

The Holy Spirit’s always going to be moving us into freedom and the Holy Spirit’s always going to be reinforcing our biblical identity, our baptismal identity. The Holy Spirit does not say things like, when are you going to learn? You’re such a disappointment. You know you’re such an awful person. You’re just horrible. You call yourself a Christian? That’s not the Holy Spirit’s voice. So when you hear that, one of the things that helps us discern whether I am listening to a lie or to the Spirit, is the Spirit will always lead us to freedom. The Spirit will always reinforce our true identity. He’s not going to shame us in that sense. Now, he’ll give us what we might call healthy shame messages. Like, it’s beneath you to do that. That’s not who you really are, let’s act like yourself. That that isn’t what I called you to be.

Now, that’s a whole totally different message to say, you’re not acting like yourself, you’re not being who I called you to be, than to say you’re just a loser right now. That’s one of the ways we tell the difference between the voice of the devil and the voice of the Spirit. So they reinforce each other.

And then we come to the H of heart-focused community. And that in the gospel, I am set free, I’m given a new identity, I am given the Holy Spirit, and I’m brought into community. What does a heart focused community do? Why do we call it a heart focused community? Because if I just say community we get all kinds of images in our head. But a heart-focused community says, we want to help you grow in freedom, we want to reinforce your identity in Christ, and we are going to help you grow your ability to walk in the Spirit.

So my heart-focused community is going to catch me walking in the flesh and saying, that’s not what we do around here. We don’t do things in the flesh, we do it in the Spirit. The heart-focused community is going to catch me not living out of my true identity and help me remind me of who I am. And a heart-focused community is going to say, yeah, we don’t want to continue to be slaves to things like bitterness and whatever. We want to live in freedom and help me with that.

[13:20] Stephanie: And there are so many things that we learn through modeling. And so when we’re in community, if there are skills that we have missed and there are things that we are needing to grow into, and be encouraged, and to develop within ourselves, that’s going to happen in community.

[13:37] Marcus: Exactly. And that’s why I love the image from Michel Hendricks and Jim Wilder of the idea that community is soil. If you have toxic soil it will literally kill your development. If you’re not planted at all and you’re not in soil, it’s going to be really hard to grow. You’re not getting nutrients. If you’re in a soil that’s nutrient light, shall we say, it’s going to be hard to grow. But if you’re in a really healthy community it’s hard not to grow.

If I’m around a whole bunch of Christians who are joyful about their relationship with God and who are actively growing in their walk with God, they are my people, I feel connected to them, it’s going to be hard for me not to grow as well. And that’s the power of community.

[14:19] Stephanie: Huzzah! And then we FISH and Go FISH.

[14:23] Marcus: Yes, we FISH and Go FISH. There is a mission that grows out of all of these things. And so in my book, A Deeper Walk, we talk about this in two directions: that mission is meant to flow out of these things. For example, your grandfather, my dad was the director of the School of World Missions at Trinity. He met with a lot of missionaries, and he would say there were a lot of missionaries who were not free. They were going off into ministry, but they weren’t free themselves.

In fact, Neil Anderson, when he created The Steps to Freedom, it was because he was tired of seeing people go into full time Christian ministry who were still in bondage. And he said, why are we not helping these people get free before they go into ministry? Freedom helps us as we were going into ministry. Identity, there’s too many people going into ministry to get an identity. Like my identity is being a pastor. My identity is being in ministry or something like that. He said, no, we have to have a clear identity in Christ that flows into that ministry, not get our identity out of it.

And then Spirit. Of course we can do ministry in the flesh and we can do mission in the flesh, or we can do it in the Spirit. Community, it’s like, I can do this in a toxic community and isolated, or I can do it in a healthy community. So it all flows in that direction.

The other direction is that each of these things is an invitation out of which mission flows. Freedom is something we offer to the world. It’s like you are in bondage, do you want freedom? There is freedom in Christ. Come see what we have here. Identity, are you happy with the identity you currently have, or do you feel like there’s a hole in your heart that isn’t filled because you’re missing out on your true identity? Well, guess what? The gospel understands who God made you to be and you can discover your true identity here.

Then the Spirit. We have a world fascinated with spirituality; but there is a spirituality that creates bondage, and there is a spirituality that sets you free. It’s like Christianity can offer you an authentic spirituality.

Then community – and this idea of “come be a part of us.” And I think Paul talks about this in Colossians. He says this gospel has been spreading and bearing fruit all over the known world. And there was a sense of a movement like, I’m a part of something that is changing the world. It’s changing things for the better. It’s making a difference. And the idea that I can be a part of that is a powerful draw to the gospel.

So you look at FISH, and it’s this two way street when it comes to mission. We want to do mission out of freedom and identity, Spirit and community. And we want to invite people into those things, and that’s why it all connects together. So we call it FISH and Go FISH. Yep.

[17:18] Stephanie: I am tour guide Barbie right now, my cheeks are killing me from smiling. Guys, our gospel identity is so epic. How privileged are we? God is amazing. Huzzah! All right, so let’s double back to the series that we’ve just completed, the ABC’s of identity, if you will. We’ve just gone through our attachment based, our beliefs based, and our community reinforced identity. And so why don’t we just take this journey, pull it together for us?

[17:59] Marcus: Well, we took this journey partly because, first of all, in my journey, identity wasn’t even on the table. And when it came to discipleship the first thirty years, well, twenty some years of my Christian journey, I don’t remember anybody talking about identity as a thing. And so partly we want to just understand identity is like that foundation on which we build. We have to understand that. And so that’s one, the second was the fact that I have an identity in Christ was eye opening to me. That was something that wasn’t on my radar.

And I think everybody needs to know and be able to explain their identity in Christ. And so that’s why I developed PACT, to make it super simple to explain that this is who I am in Christ. I’m pardoned, I’m adopted, I’m a citizen of the kingdom, and I have a new title, I’m a saint. And obviously there’s more nuanced things I could say, but it gets to the heart of it. There’s this difference though between a legal identity that every Christian has and this more individualized identity that is developed over time, that is developed relationally. And so we see two elements of this.

One is that there is a heart identity. Let me back it up this way, say there’s an attachment identity that is formed relationally as my brain grows and develops. And I need to pay attention to that because it gives me the capacity to grow and to live out of my legal identity. When it comes to community, that’s where I’m now looking at my heart values. I have an identity that God has given to me as a person of mercy, or a person of justice, or a person of order. A person who is characterized a certain way by certain heart values. And it’s the community’s job to recognize those heart values, call them out and reinforce them.

And so you get all three elements of identity this way. You get the legal identity that’s true of all Christians. You get the attachment identity which has to do with the growth of the brain and the development of my sense of self. And then you get the community identity, which is calling out my heart values and reminding me of who I am at all three levels and building this out. And then I’m doing it for others. And when all three of those things are operating together you get the strongest possible foundation for living an effective life. There you go, drop the mic. Right?

[20:39] Stephanie: Huzzah! Huzzah! Sorry, I pumped my fist, but I didn’t say anything. So what are some practical next steps for people coming out of this?

[20:53] Marcus: So first of all, that while I may have this all figured out, it doesn’t mean that it automatically happens every day. You don’t wake up every day and feel like, oh, I am such a victor in Christ today. I have to be aware of my feelings and that feelings are liars, right? They don’t always tell us what’s true. In fact, my feelings can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction. So there are times when I have to remind myself of what is true despite how I feel. It also means that I need to maybe be doing some study for myself to just reinforce, and not just take my word for it that this is true, but actually dive into this a little bit myself.

A great classic book on identity crisis is still Neil Anderson’s, Victory Over the Darkness. When it comes to community we need to be intentionally looking for people with whom we can take off our masks, and looking for people we can trust. And I’m a big believer that I need people at a variety of levels of trust in my life. Not everybody in my life I have to be able to be completely vulnerable with. There are people in my life that it wouldn’t be safe to do that. But it doesn’t mean I can’t have any relationship with them. So I just need to be growing relationships and adding some joy into those relationships.

So some practical next steps. Make sure I’m expanding my circle of people with whom I can share joy. And then specifically sharing, expanding the numbers of people with whom I can be vulnerable with and they can be vulnerable with me. Then I need to be doing some kind of a study on this. And then if I’m looking at repairing my attachment identity, again, that’s where I’m going to be working on skills that I missed out on. And again, Thrive Training is the best I’ve seen in helping people do that.

[23:01] Stephanie: So there’s some practical steps. Yes,very good. All right, I’m going to pull a note from one of our listeners. Cindy says, “When I first started listening to your podcast, I found myself skeptical of your close relationship with your dad. I realized it was because I never had that in my life. It has been really good for me to hear what a positive, healthy, father-daughter relationship is like. Thank you. I’ve also really been enjoying the content.”

[23:32] Marcus: As long as they like the content. No, it’s true. I was commenting earlier when you first shared that with me and how a lot of your life you’ve had to deal with people coming up and almost being angry with you.

[23:43] Stephanie: Oh, literally. I’ve been scolded my whole life. People have come up to me saying, I hope you appreciate what a blessing it is to have your dad. And anyway, I just have so much compassion. I’m just so, so glad that honestly, it wasn’t even in my mind that was something people would get out of this. We were just thinking hey, I get to share content.

[24:05] Marcus: We were literally thinking about that.

[24:07] Stephanie: And I’ve gotten that feedback a lot since we’ve started. People have enjoyed just our interaction, whatever the content is. And so that blesses my heart. And, yeah, I have a lot of compassion and happiness for people that…..

[24:24] Marcus: It is sad that it’s so rare. And one of the things that I found just as a dad is that you get some people who are like, oh, when they were little, I miss this or that. I’ve always felt like I enjoyed the next stage more than the last one all through growing up. Like, oh, yay, this is cool now we can do this. Our relationship can grow this way and then it can grow this way. I think part of it is that I’ve enjoyed every stage of your life and every stage of Ben’s life. As you grow it just feels like there’s more to be shared now and there’s more that we can relate to. The joy is authentic.

[25:10] Stephanie: Yes, yes.  And I will also say it’s not that we don’t ever have struggles, but we are very, very authentically happy to be with each other. I just respect and appreciate you so much. And if I haven’t said that enough on this podcast I say it again, that I am constantly just in awe of your brilliance and your compassion. What you hear is what you get you guys, he’s not different.

[25:47] Marcus: We’re not fighting and then say, okay, okay, we got to pull it together, we got a podcast. It’s like you see in the movies sometimes. And part of it is we’ve always tried to just be honest.

[26:07] Stephanie: That’s what I was gonna say. We’re good at being honest and communicating with each other and it’s a very huge blessing to have you as a counselor my whole life.

[26:18] Marcus: And again, you can only start where you’re at too. So if you’re like, oh, I want a relationship like that. Well, we’ve been working at this our whole life. You just start where you’re at and try to build a little bit more joy than you had before.

[26:33] Stephanie: I will also say, for instance, I think it was the last episode that we had the testimony from the woman who was seventy-seven. She’s mentoring people and having a mentor for herself and she’s growing there. That’s one of the beauties of when we talk about the levels of maturity and the stages of life. Elders are there for shepherding the community, for parenting the community. And so I know a lot of people who don’t have a good relationship with their biological parents, but they have spiritual parents.

[27:09] Marcus: And that’s an excellent point because sometimes there’s nothing you can do to change the nature of your relationship. It’s like they always say, it takes two to do these things. And there’ve been plenty of wonderful parents who haven’t had the blessing of having kids grow up to have a healthy relationship. It’s not like there’s a secret. Like, I did something right and that if anybody just does this one right thing, but it is authentic. We like each other.

[27:43] Stephanie: I was gonna say it is a privilege to count you as my very best friend as well as my father.

[27:49] Marcus: It’s a good thing.

[27:50] Stephanie: All right, well, after that lovefest, do you want to wrap up this series? Final thoughts?

[28:01] Marcus: It’s hard to wrap up, isn’t it? But, it is fun. What I think throughout this is that one of your core themes in life has been true identity. And I can’t get away from this because a lot of people don’t know that you are a novelist who has yet to be officially published. But it doesn’t mean you don’t write prolifically and someday this is all going to come to a head and people are going to line up to buy your novels.

But there’s always been a theme, I think, in this thing about people searching for their identity. For me, it starts as basic as the story of the ugly duckling. And I can remember telling you this story when you were young and struggling at some different points, but this story has just always been profound to me. So we’re going to wrap up all the theology and everything else with the story of the ugly duckling, and we all know it. There was a baby swan who was raised by ducks and always thought she was a duck. And it turned out later when she didn’t look like everybody else, didn’t act like everybody else, and didn’t see that it’s because her true identity was a swan.

And I think what God wants us to know is that regardless of how our family saw us, regardless of how our church treated us, regardless of what others have said about us, he knows our true identity. He knows who he made us to be and he knows our identity in Christ. He knows what’s gotten broken in our attachment development and he knows what our heart values are. And so God is always going to see us not in terms of our performance, like, have you been a good duck this week even though I made you to be a swan? It’s this idea that God is always seeing us for who we really are and that’s who he loves. He loves the real us.

So I tell people frequently, and I’ve told them this throughout ministry life. God isn’t interested in you performing your way into intimacy with him. He is interested in you being honest with him. God will always meet you at the point of your honesty. Not necessarily because you do things exactly right. And I just leave it there. We got to be honest with God, be vulnerable with God, and realize that he loves us and made us the way we are for a reason.

[30:23] Stephanie: Thank you for ending with that. That’s very encouraging. This has been wonderful. And, hey, everybody, thank you for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk exists to make heart focused discipleship the norm for Christians everywhere. If you’d like to support this cause, you can become a Deeper Walk Trailblazer with your monthly donation of $25 or more. And if you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the On the Trail podcast, leave a review, and share with your friends.

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