I know I have asked this question at many times from the pulpit and in other settings. It is an important question.
Identity is complex.
Answer the question I started with is not always “simple”. There are nuances based on many factors of life. Race, socioeconomic status, religion, geography, language, ancestral heritage, etc.
Who were you?
Tied to understanding who we are we must understand who we were. Where we came from. We see this especially in our text this morning as Paul starts by saying “We (who) are Jews by nature”.
Who are you becoming? Who will you be?
This talks about the future and the direction we are heading. Sometimes we can be so stuck in the past and the present we fail to be intentional about the future. Sometime one particular aspect of our past starts to overshadow the other parts of ourselves. In our present culture feelings are supreme.
Sometimes we need an identity crisis.
This may sound odd but I believe identity crises are useful and help us to stop enough in order to be intentional.
Christ the great identity disrupter.
Christ should challenge and change our identity. This is the point of Paul
