What is your identity?
Your identity, should you choose to accept it, is this: You are a child of God.
You were made in God’s image. You are not like the rest of creation. As he formed you from the dust of the ground, he made you to look like himself. Theologians are so inspired by this truth that they use a special Latin phrase to honor it — the Imago Dei.
When you think about the image of God, don’t worry over what you see in the mirror. God’s image is not found in our physical attributes — height, weight, skin color, gender, etc. God is spirit (see John 4:24), so his image is found in the spiritual attributes he breathes into each and every one of us (see Genesis 2:7).
What are those attributes? In this series of articles, we have identified them as Life, Light, Law, and Liberty. Today, we add the crowning jewel of the attributes of God: Love.
It is in these spiritual attributes that we find our true and inalienable identity. They are given to us by God, and no human authority can take them from us. Neither can sickness, disease, or natural disaster. If your identity is based on something the world can take from you, then you are basing it on the wrong thing.
The world cannot take Life, Light, Law, Liberty, and Love away from you. You are the Imago Dei, and the world cannot touch that identity.
There is so much to be said about Love. Instead of trying to describe it in my words, I’d rather let God speak for himself. Here are two Scriptures about Love. Meditate on them, and we’ll talk more about this amazing attribute of God in the next article.
I Corinthians 13
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.
I John 4:7-21
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world, we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
