YOUR IDENTITY IN CHRIST IS NOT A GOAL, IT'S A STARTING POINT.
Most Christians spend their entire lives working toward something the new birth already made them. They strive for a righteousness they already possess. They pursue a holiness they already carry. They treat their identity n Christ as a destination they have not yet reached - and the enemy never has to work hard to keep them defeated. Because a believer who is working toward their identity will never walk in their authority.
The church has produced generations of believers who are working towards something they already are. They are striving for a righteousness they already possess. They are pursuing a holiness they already carry. They are trying to become something that the new birth already made them. And the enemy has not had to work hard to keep them defeated. Because a believer who is working toward their identity will never walk in their authority. A believer who treats who they are in Christ as a destination they have not yet reached will spend their entire Christian life in the posture of a beggar when they were born into the posture of a king.
And this is not a minor theological error. This is the central misunderstanding that governs most of the Christian life because everything flows from identity.
Every prayer is shaped by what you believe you are.
Every declaration is colored by what you believe you carry. Every act of faith is either empowered or crippled by your answer to the most fundamental question in the Christian life. Not what can God do, bụt who are you in Christ right now.
This is identified as the root problem with devastating clarity. We have preached condemnation and sin so long that we do not know how to preach righteousness and to tell people what they are in Christ. When someone does tell them, they feel it is false teaching." The church has been so saturated with the consciousness of what it was before salvation that it has never entered the consciousness of what it became at salvation. And the result is a body of believers who know the cross intellectually but have never entered the new creation experientially.
Who know they are forgiven but have never grasped that forgiveness was only the beginning. Who know they are saved but have never discovered what they were saved into. Because salvation is not the destination. Salvation is the starting line. The new birth is not the finish line of the Christian life. It is the entrance. It is the door through which the believer steps into a completely new order of being, a new species, a new class, a new identity so total, so complete, so legally established before heaven.
It makes the believer a partaker of God's own nature, carrying His righteousness, His wisdom, His authority, His love, His life. Not as future rewards to be earned, but as present and possessions to be occupied.
And the moment you begin to see this, the moment the eyes of your understanding are enlightened to who the new birth made you rather than who you are still trying to become, the posture of your entire Christian life shifts at its foundation. This is what we are covering today : what we are in Christ.
The new creation identity and what it means to live from it rather than work toward it. And by the time this teaching is finished, you will understand not only that your identity in Christ is real, but that it was never a goal. It was always a starting point and everything changes the moment you begin to live from that starting point rather than straining toward it.
Now before we go into the scriptures, I want you to sit with a picture that captures everything this teaching is about.
Imagine a man who has inherited a vast estate. The deed is in his name. The title is legally his. The house, the land, the resources, all of it transferred to him the moment the inheritance was established, legally complete, irrevocably his. And he is standing outside the gate in the rain, knocking, asking to be let in, wondering whether he is worthy enough to enter, performing religious activity in the hope that someday he will be considered deserving of what the inheritance already gave him.
That is the picture of most of the church in relation to the new creation identity. The inheritance has been established. The deed is in your name. Everything that belongs to Christ belongs to you by virtue of being in HIM legally, completely right now.
And most believers are still standing outside the gate, still knocking, still striving, still treating the finished work as something they have not yet qualified for.
This teaching is the key that opens the gate. Not because it gives you something new, because it shows you what you already have, what you already are, what the new birth already made you, and what it looks like to finally walk through the door.
2 Corinthians 5:17, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new.
Be precise about the Greek word for new here. It does not mean new in time like a new car that is the latest model of an existing design. It means new in kind, a different category of being, a species that did not exist before the new birth.
Not an improved version of the old man. Not a reformed version of the sinner, a new creation as distinct from the old creation as light is from darkness.
As life is from death, as the nature of God is from the nature of Adam. And this new creation does not carry the identity of the old man as its starting point. It carries the identity of Christ as its starting point.
It does not begin from weakness and work toward strength. It begins from strength.
It does not begin from unrighteousness and work toward righteousness. It begins from righteousness.
It does not begin from defeat and work toward victory. It begins from victory.
This is what the denominational church has missed. Not partially, almost entirely. The evangelical tradition has been so focused on getting people saved, on bringing them to the starting line that it never taught them what the starting line actually means. It never showed them what they became the moment they crossed it. It never unpacked the staggering legal, spiritual, and practical implications of being a new creation in Christ.
And so generation after generation of born again believers have stood at the starting line, waiting for the race to begin, not knowing they were already running from a position of absolute advantage, carrying everything they would ever need, backed by heaven's full authority, indwelt by the life of God Himself.
What we are in Christ.
It is God's vision for you to enjoy the fullness of this new creation's privileges, not work toward them. Enjoy them. Privilege is not something you earn. Privilege is something you occupy by virtue of who you are.
And who you are in Christ is not determined by your performance, your consistency, your spiritual track record, or the quality of your prayer life last week.
Who you are in Christ is determined entirely by what the new birth made you legally, permanently, irrevocably in the sight of heaven.
The new creation fact gives to you all that it means to Jesus Christ and the Father God whether you know it or not.
But you only enjoy what you know. You only walk in what you see. You only live from what has become revelation rather than merely information.
And here is the distinction. There is a difference between knowing something theologically and inhabiting it experientially.
Most believers know they are new creations theologically. They can quote 2 Corinthians 5:17. (if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new.)
They have heard it preached. They have written it in their journals. They have said amen to it from the pew. But they are not inhabiting it.
They are not living from it. They are not making decisions, facing the enemy, approaching God or speaking to circumstances from the consciousness that they are a new creation, a different species, a being that carries the nature and life of God as a present reality.
And the reason is simple. Information about who you are in Christ does not automatically become the governing reality of your life. It has to become revelation. It has to move from the mind into the spirit. It has to shift from something you know to something you are.
And that shift from information to revelation is what this teaching is designed to produce. Because when 2 Corinthians 5:17 (if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new.) becomes revelation rather than information. When new creation is not just a theological category, but the living reality you wake up in every morning, everything about how you approach God, face opposition, speak to circumstances, and conduct your daily life changes permanently.
Old things are passed away, not some things, not most things, old things. All things are become new.
Not improving toward new, not working toward new, already new, right now in Christ.
Ephesians 2:10. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, his workmanship.
Now stop at those two words and received an entire revelation from them.
¶ "If you are His workmanship, you are satisfactory to HIM. He is pleased with you not because of what you have done, but because of what He has made.
A craftsman is not ashamed of His work when the work is complete.
He does not look at what he has made and say, "This is almost good enough. This needs more effort before I can be pleased with it."
And the new creation in Christ is God's completed work, not God's work in progress, not God's ongoing project that requires your cooperation to eventually reach an acceptable standard. His workmanship created, finished, complete in Christ Jesus.
Now go to Colossians 2:10. And ye are complete in him. complete, not becoming complete, not complete when you have grown enough spiritually, not complete when you have overcome enough sin or accumulated enough years of Christian maturity, but already complete right now in HIM. The fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ bodily. Colossians 2:9 states that in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form. This verse emphasizes the belief in the complete divinity of Christ, affirming that He embodies the essence of God.
And ye are complete in HIM, which means the completeness of Christ is your completeness.
The wisdom of Christ is your wisdom.
The righteousness of Christ is your righteousness.
The authority of Christ is your authority.
The life of Christ is your life.
Not as a future inheritance to be claimed at the end of a long process of spiritual development.As a present, legal already established reality that you occupy by virtue of being in HIM.
Now, here is the illustration used that makes this unmistakably practical. Imagine a father who has deposited everything his child will ever need into an account in the child's name. The money is already there. The resources are already present. The supply is already established.
And the child keeps coming to the father asking, "Please give me some money. Please give me some provision. Please give me what I need."
And our Father God can only respond. "It is already in your account. All you need to do is draw from it." That is precisely how most believers approach their identity in Christ.
They keep asking God to make them righteous when the account of righteousness is already full.
They keep asking God to make them strong when the strength of Christ is already deposited in their spirit.
They keep asking God to give them wisdom. When Christ who is the wisdom of God according to 1 Corinthians 1:30 already lives in them and God is not refusing to give. He is saying it is already in the account. Stop asking for what you already have. Start drawing from what I already deposited. This is the shift from identity as a goal to identity as a starting point.
And it is not merely a shift in theology. It is a shift in posture, a shift in approach, a shift in how you open your mouth, how you face the enemy, how you pray, and how you conduct every moment of your daily life. His workmanship complete in Him right now, not a goal, but a starting point.
Now, let me show you why this matters beyond theology. Because most believers hear complete in him and immediately the religious mind pushes back. It says, "But I still sin, but I still struggle. But I still fall short in so many areas. How can I be complete?"
And the answer is this.
Complete in him does not mean your behavior is perfect. It means your standing before God is perfect because it is not based on your behavior. It is based on his. Your completeness is the completeness of Christ. Your righteousness is the righteousness of Christ. Your standing before the Father God is the standing of the son because you are in the Son. And our Father looks at you and sees what He sees when He looks at Jesus Christ. Not your failures, not your inconsistencies, not the gap between who you are and who you are becoming. He sees His workmanship created, finished, complete.
And the believer who grasps this, who truly receives it in their spirit as a present reality rather than a future hope, stops approaching God with apology and starts approaching HIM with the boldness that Hebrews 4:16 commands.
Bold, not because you are perfect, bold because your standing is perfect. Not because you have earned access, but because the blood of Jesus established access that nothing can revoke. 1 Corinthians 1:30. Of HIM are ye in Christ Jesus who was made unto us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
Four things, four present realities, four starting points that most believers have been treating as destinations.
Christ has been made unto you wisdom from God. Your starting point is not confusion, not inadequacy, not the constant need to figure things out on your own. Christ who is the wisdom of God lives in your spirit.
Which means your starting point is access to divine wisdom for every decision, every challenge, every situation you will ever face. Not wisdom you earn through years of study. Not wisdom you accumulate through experience. the wisdom of God Himself available to you as a present resource because Christ who is that wisdom lives inside you. James 1 verse 5 confirms it. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to all men liberally. Not let him strive for wisdom. Not let him develop wisdom over decades of spiritual discipline. Ask draw from the account. The wisdom is already deposited.
Christ has been made unto you righteousness. Your starting point is not unworthiness, not the constant sense that you do not quite measure up, not the nagging consciousness that your standing before God is conditional on yesterday's performance. You are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.
2 Corinthians 5:21, present tense, legal standing, not a reward for consistent behavior, a gift of grace established by the cross of Jesus Christ and received through faith, and it cannot be revoked by your failures because it was never based on your performance.
The believer who knows this, who has received righteousness consciousness rather than sin consciousness, approaches God differently, resists the enemy differently, speaks differently, lives differently because your identity does not fluctuate with your behavior.
Your behavior is meant to flow from your identity. Christ has been made unto you sanctification.
Your starting point is not moral impurity working toward holiness. You have been set apart, separated unto God as a present reality through your union with Christ, sanctified, holy, belonging to God, not as a goal you are pursuing, but as a status you already occupy. Christ has been made unto you redemption.
Your starting point is not bondage, not the authority of the enemy over your life, not the claims that darkness once held over you. You have been purchased back, translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of God's love. Colossians 1:13.
Delivered, redeemed. Every claim the enemy once held over your life canceled at the cross. Every legal ground he once occupied in your life evicted by the blood.
Four starting points. Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption. Not four destinations you are working toward through spiritual effort.
Four present realities you are drawing from. Because Christ who embodies all four has been made unto you everything you will ever need.
This is your starting point, not where you hope to arrive, where you already are in Christ.
Now here is the question most believers never ask. If all of this is already mine, why does my daily experience not reflect it? And the answer is simple. You only experience what you know. You only walk in what you see. The reality is established in the legal realm. But the experience of that reality is governed by your revelation of it.
A man who does not know he is rich lives like a poor man, even if the account is fulI.
A believer who does not know they are righteous lives under condemnation. Even though the righteousness of Christ is their legal standing, the gap between legal reality and experiential reality is closed by revelation.
The Word becoming real in your spirit. The truth moving from information in your mind to governing conviction in your inner man. And that is what this teaching is building.
Now let us see what changes practically when a believer shifts from treating identity as a goal to living from identity as a starting point. When identity is a goal, prayer becomes begging. You approach God as someone who is not yet worthy of what they are asking for. You ask hesitantly.
You qualify your requests with if it be your will. Not because you are genuinely uncertain of God's will, but because you are uncertain of your standing before HIM. You end your prayers wondering whether God heard, whether He will respond, whether you prayed with enough faith or enough sincerity. And the enemy capitalizes on every moment of that uncertainty because uncertainty is his operating environment.
When identity is a starting point, prayer becomes a legal proceeding. You approach the throne of grace boldly. Hebrews 4:16. (Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.)
Not because you are arrogant, but because the blood of Jesus Christ has given you legal standing. You do not ask hesitantly. You declare from the consciousness of who you are. You bring your request before the Father God as a son or daughter who knows they have access, who knows their standing, who knows that the One they are approaching is not a distant judge, but our FATHER who has already provided everything they need.
Note: ¶Prayer is not the begging of an inferior. It is the claiming of the rights of a son. And a son who knows his rights does not approach his Father with the posture of a beggar. But he approaches with the confidence of an heir.
When identity is a goal, the enemy's accusations land. Because a believer who is still working toward their identity has no settled foundation from which to resist.
When condemnation says you are unworthy, the believer working toward worthiness has no answer.
When fear says you are unprotected, the believer working toward security has no settled ground.
When sickness says it has a right to remain, the believer working toward healing has no legal standing from which to enforce its eviction.
The enemy does not need to defeat you. He only needs to keep you uncertain about who you are.
When identity is a starting point, the enemy's accusations have no landing ground. Romans 8:33, who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? No one because the one who could condemn is Christ and Christ died for you, rose for you, and is at this moment interceding for you.
How do different Christian denominations interpret Romans 8:33 regarding salvation?
Different Christian denominations interpret Romans 8:33 in various ways, particularly regarding the concept of "the elect." Some, like Calvinists, believe it refers to those sovereignly chosen by God for salvation, while others, such as Arminians, emphasize that God's grace is available to all who respond to the gospel.
When condemnation comes, the believer who knows their identity does not fight to establish righteousness. They declare from established righteousness.
When fear comes, they declare from established security.
When sickness comes, they enforce from established covenant right.
The identity is already settled. The standing is already established. The authority is already granted. All that remains is for the believer to open their mouth and speak 🗣️ from where they already are.
Romans 8:1. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. This verse was almost entirely unknown to the average believer of his generation.
And the reason it was unknown is not that it was hidden in an obscure corner of the Bible. It is that the church had built such a deep consciousness of sin and unworthiness into its members that even when they read the verse, they could not receive it as applying to them personally. They knew it theologically. They could not inhabit it experientially.
Because you cannot live from a truth you have not yet received as your personal present legally established reality.
No condemnation, not reduced condemnation, not condemnation suspended while you try harder. None.
And this is precisely why the most important thing a believer can do is learn to confess who they are in Christ.
Not occasionally, but consistently, not when they feel like it, especially when they do not feel like it, not when circumstances support it, especially when circumstances contradict it.
Because the confession of identity is the mechanism through which legal reality becomes experiential reality.
When you say 🗣️,: "l am the righteousness of God in Christ," you are not speaking a wish, you are speaking a legal fact.
When you say 🗣️ : Christ lives in me, you are not speaking a metaphor. You are speaking a present reality.
When you say 🗣️: l am complete in HIM, you are not speaking presumption. You are speaking covenant truth.
And when you speak it consistently, when it becomes the governing confession of your daily life, the distance between what is legally true and what is experientially real begins to close.
Now I want to share with you something that I believe is one of the most powerful moments in all of his ministry. He described sitting at his desk and writing out what he was in Christ. He wrote, "l am indwelt of God. I have his nature and life. I am what he says l am. He is in me what he says he is. He can do through me what he says he can do." And then he wrote, "I trembled as I read it. He trembled, not because it was presumptuous, because it was true. And the weight of that truth landing in his spirit not as theology, but as lived reality, produced something he described as the most important shift of his entire Christian life. He wrote, "I saw this glorious fact. I did not need faith for what already belonged to me, what had already been given to me. I did not need faith for these things because they were already mine. AII I needed was courage. Courage to use what belonged to me."
Courage to use what belonged to him. Not more faith. Not more consecration. Not more spiritual effort or longer prayer sessions or deeper theological study.
Courage. The Courage to open his mouth and say what God says about him. The courage to approach the throne boldly. The courage to resist the enemy from his established position. The courage to declare from his identity rather than begging toward it.
And that is what l am calling you to today. Not more striving, but more courage.
Ephesians 1:3, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ." All, not some. Not the ones you have qualified for through spiritual consistency.
All spiritual blessings already released, already deposited, already yours in Christ.
This is your starting point. Not a destination you are working toward, but a treasury you are drawing from, not a race you are running toward a finish line, but a position you already occupy and are learning to live from more fully each day.
When you know your identity is a starting point, you stop straining and start drawing.
You stop performing and start being.
You stop working toward righteousness and start living from it.
You stop trying to get God to move and start moving from the consciousness that God has already moved.
You stop begging heaven for what heaven has already released.
And you start doing what was the simplest and most overlooked thing in the entire Christian life. Acting on the Word as though it is so. Because it is.
Now let me leave you with something practical. Because this revelation demands a response, not just an agreement. And the response is not more effort. It is a daily declaration.
Every morning before the world speaks, before the circumstances report, before the enemy gets the first word, you open your mouth and you declare your identity. You say, "l am a new creation in Christ Jesus. I am the righteousness of God in Christ. I am complete in him. Christ has been made unto me wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. I am his workmanship. I am indwelt of God. I have his nature and his life. l am what he says I am. He is in me what he says he is. And he can do through me what he says he can do. You say it until it becomes more real to your spirit than what your circumstances are saying. You say it until the gap between legal truth and experiential reality closes. You say it until the confession is no longer something you are tryıng to believe, put the settiea governıng conviction of your inner man. Because that is what believers discovered, not a new truth.
The courage to inhabit a truth that was already established. the courage to say what God says 🗣️ consistently, persistently in the face of every voice that contradicts it until the Word became the atmosphere he lived in rather than information he occasionally visited.
That is the life available to you, not someday, starting today. Your identity in Christ is not a goal. It never was. It is the ground beneath your feet. It is the atmosphere you breathe. It is the starting point from which every prayer is prayed, every declaration is made, every enemy is resisted, and every mountain is addressed.
It was established the moment you were born again. It cannot be revoked by your failures. It cannot be diminished by your weakness. It cannot be earned by your effort or lost by your inconsistency.
It is who you are right now in Christ, complete, righteous, indwelt, empowered, seated.
🗣️: l am who God says l am, now. Declare this truth not as a wish, as a declaration, as the statement of a believer who has seen what the new birth made them and has chosen from this day forward to live from it rather than work toward it. It is your starting point. It always was.
Now start from it.
CHRIST IN YOU: The TRUTH That Ends STRUGGLE and Ignites UNSHAKABLE FAITH.
THE NEW CREATION IS NOT THE OLD MAN TRYING HARDER WITH GOD 'S HELP.
