We get asked for our ID all the time. It doesn’t matter where we are or who is asking. It is always the key to some “next step.” What ID do you present? Your driver license, your school ID, your social security card, your membership card, your bank card? When you think about it, we have all kinds of ID’s at our disposal and each one of them gets used in one place or another. But what about the one that we present everyday?
Gal 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ESV
As a member of the bride of Christ our ID is on display everyday, everywhere we go no matter the hour day or night. It is right there in plain sight for everyone around us to examine, whether we know it or not. That’s something Paul understood and his post Saul life was dedicated to following.
As a Christian our ID is always on display, but the key to what ID is outwardly on display is directly related to what we are focused on in the inside. We have been filled with the Holy Spirit, who brings with Him all of the holiness, purity and righteousness of Jesus. But as Paul also well knew, there is an ongoing battle inside us that is in constant tension with The Spirit. That is what caused him to so succinctly lay out the challenge.
Rom 7:21-24 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? ESV
Paul knew that struggle was destined to plague us all our days down here during this time of maturing spiritually. Every day the world comes at us with challenges to our faith and every day we respond to those challenges; the world’s way or the Spirit’s way. It’s our choice to decide which ID we present to the world around us and it is our responsibility to show the one that identifies us with Jesus in His death and resurrection. And there is only one way to do that and only One who can accomplish that is us…
Rom 7:25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. ESV
Go back to Paul’s testimony to the Galatians… And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. But this is not Paul’s faith in Jesus. It is the faith that the Son of God imparted to him by grace that he lives by. And so it is for each one of us who have made Jesus Lord of our life. He is the One who has given us the faith to trust in His Spirit to face the challenges with everything He has placed within us… to present to the world the ID that testifies to who we are and whose we are!