Identity

iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 1.10.10

Earlier this year at Bridge Community Church, Pastor Vinson preached a series on our identity in Christ. Though various ideas were tossed around in one of the planning meetings, an illustration concept was eventually developed based on the concept of reflections revealing truth. Proverbs 27:19 likens our hearts to pools of water, reflecting the real us. So what does that mean for Christians?

Ephesians 5:8 NLT
For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light!

It’s transformative! Our identity need no longer be defined by our past, by our failures, by our dirty sins. Washed clean, our identity is all holiness, righteousness, completeness in Christ. Even living in a dark and crumbling world, our spiritual reality is far different.

Romans 3:24 NLT
Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.

Titus 3:7 NLT
Because of his grace he declared us righteous and gave us confidence that we will inherit eternal life.

It took a couple weekends of test shots, and several more to get the final photoshoots completed, but the illustrations slowly came together. Using a medium format lens and my DSLR, local rows of trees were captured then stitched together into a high resolution 16bit comp. Depth mapping was hand painted to help merge the trees with stock photography for the dramatically unreal skies, and along with shots of a nearby grassy bank, the environments took shape. Jim and Adrianne graciously volunteered to model, and yet a few more weekends later, the final compositing was done.

As I’ve written before, this is a concept I’m still struggling to grasp myself. Some days it seems too good to be true, and I deny reality; how could God be that forgiving? Other days I’m simply too distracted to remember who I am; living not as an adopted son of wealthy means, but as an ignorant pauper. Pastor Vinson calls it divine amnesia, forgetting what we’ve been freely given.

Ephesians 1:18 NLT
I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.

1 Corinthians 4:18 NIV
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

And yet, amidst all the glory of our identity in Christ, there’s even more yet to see! Speaking again of mirrors, Paul likens in 1 Corinthians 13:12 our current understanding to a dim reflection; incomplete and incomparable to the vastness of what is to come!

Identity

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