As we continue to look at our identity in Christ, we must settle on how we will fundamentally view ourselves during our stay on earth. Our central characteristic, love for God and others, is a standard that is virtually impossible to attain. Thus, we often find ourselves falling short of loving God and others. Are we sinners who are forgiven, or saints who still sin? When we go to the very foundation of our identity as Christians who still reside in a fallen world, do we find depravity or righteousness?

Session Aims

• Individual Aim: To consider your status and nature based on the Scripture’s definitions of saint and sinner.
• Group Aim: To review and evaluate the nature of a Christian as it relates to sin and righteousness.

Preparation

Read Session 8: Saint or Sinner.

Complete Biblical Exercise: 1 Peter 1–2 beginning on page 70.

Introduction

On the surface, asking whether we are saved sinners or sinning saints may appear to be splitting hairs, but the ramifications of the answers are vast. Too often we judge our status based on recent behavior. If we go through a time of significant sinfulness, we view ourselves as hopelessly trapped by the dominion of sin. Likewise, if we experience a time of spiritual growth and restraint from sinful behavior, we are more prone to see ourselves as worthy of the designation “saint.” We need to build our identity upon the definition of Scripture rather than upon our feelings about, or analysis of, our lifestyle.

Content

Sinner or saint? While a fair examination of Scripture finds both descriptions, the point of this session is to find out why and in what sense we are both saints and sinners.

The New Testament describes Christians as growing in holiness while also struggling with sin. Yet our struggle with sin doesn’t undermine our firm standing before God when we have trusted Christ for salvation (see Romans 5:9-11). Because of our new identity in Christ, we’re called to be holy because God is holy (see 1 Peter 1:16). Holy means “separated out for a special purpose.” We are separated out from others simply in that others haven’t been reconciled to God through Christ. Saint means “holy person” or “one who is separated out.” So we’re saints in that we’ve been separated out for special purposes: worshiping God, abandoning sin, and living in ways that draw others toward Christ.

Christ is the ultimate Saint because the rest of us fall short of the perfection He attained as God in human flesh. Yet Christians are identified with Christ by grace through faith in Him. Our identity is radically changed.

But how are believers changed? The short answer is: over time and through experiences. One major change is that we learn a new way to decide what is good. We’ve acknowledged that God’s righteousness (His standard of what is true, just, and good) is now the goal of our life. After all, a true commitment to Christ involves repenting of our failure to live up to God’s righteousness and receiving the gift of righteousness in Christ.

Look at the difference between the rich young ruler (see Mark 10:17-23) and Zacchaeus (see Luke 19:1-10). The ruler was unwilling to repent from valuing money and its benefits above God’s righteousness. His life didn’t change because his fundamental values remained unchanged. Zacchaeus, on the other hand, decided to repent of his primary pursuit of money and, in exchange, acknowledge his need to live according to God’s righteous standards. He received grace and forgiveness from Jesus but also a fundamental shift in how he perceived his life purpose. Internally, his values had already shifted to the point that he began pouring out his estate to those he had wronged.

We shouldn’t presume that Zacchaeus went on to live a sinless life. However, we can see that his fundamental understanding of life had radically changed. He had a new understanding of himself and his purpose because Christ had offered him new life.

This is why James emphasized the manifestation of faith in a person’s behavior (“faith without deeds is dead”; see James 2:14-26). James meant that a Christian’s life can’t possibly be void of righteous behavior. Growth in righteousness may at times seem stagnant, but there’s always some evidence of transformation in a believer’s values and behavior over a significant period of time. If our life is void of righteousness, we can’t have repented of our past life in favor of valuing God’s righteous standard. In other words, we wouldn’t really be believers. We are fundamentally changed only when we genuinely come to faith in Christ. And if we have genuinely come to faith, our prospect for life after death will always be changed and, here in this life, our life in Christ will always be changing.

Conclusion

Calling ourselves saints doesn’t ignore the sin in every believer’s life. Believers still sin. This diminishes neither the holy standard God has set nor the sinfulness of believers who fail to meet that standard. Although believers sin, faith in Christ changes a person so radically in God’s eyes that the title of saint is appropriate.

One part of having their identity fundamentally changed is that believers receive “gifts” with which to serve others. God gifts each believer uniquely for His service. We will discuss spiritual gifts in the next session.

Biblical Exercise: 1 Peter 1–2

Read 1 Peter 1:3–2:3. Also, review “A Method for the Biblical Exercises” beginning on page 17.

Observation — “What Do I See?”

1. Who are the persons (including God) in the passage? What is the condition of those persons?

2. What subjects did Peter discuss in the passage? What did he assert?

3. Note the sequence in which Peter made these assertions. (You might number them in order.)

4. What did Peter emphasize? Are there repeated ideas and themes? How are the various parts related?

5. Why did Peter write this passage? (Did he say anything about ways he expected the reader to change after reading it?)

Interpretation Phase 1 — “What Did It Mean Then?”

1. Coming to Terms —Are there any words in the passage that youdon’t understand? Write down anything you found confusing about the passage.

2. Finding Where It Fits —What clues does the Bible give about the meaning of this passage?

•  Immediate Context (the passage being studied)
•  Remote Context (passages that come before and after the one being studied)

3. Getting into Their Sandals—An Exercise in Imagination

•  What are the main points of this passage? Summarize or write an outline of the passage.
•  What do you think the recipients of the letter were supposed to take from this passage? How did God, inspiring Peter to write this letter, want this passage to impact the recipients?

Interpretation Phase 2 — “What Does It Mean Now?”

1. What is the timeless truth in the passage? In one or two sentences, write down what you learned about God from 1 Peter 1–2.

2. How does that truth work today?

Application — “What Can I Do to Make This Truth Real?”

1. What can I do to make this truth real for myself?

2. For my family?

3. For my friends?

4. For the people who live near me?

5. For the rest of the world?

Assignment

Read Session 9: Spiritual Gifts.

Complete the Life Inventory: Spiritual Gifts exercise beginning on page 118.

As we probe the depths of our identity in Christ, we want to direct our attention to a phrase in one of Paul’s letters: “the new man.” Our look into the meaning of “the old man” and “the new man” (see Colossians 3:9-10) will reveal that our identity is not only individual but also corporate. This is a significant biblical discovery as we close our study of Identity.

Session Aims

• Individual Aim: To gain a greater understanding of and appreciation for Christian community.
• Group Aim: To explore the corporate aspects of identity in Christ and discuss the implications of each aspect of our new identity.

Preparation

Read Session 10: Corporate Aspects of Identity in Christ.

Complete Biblical Exercise: Colossians 3 beginning on page 83.

Introduction

As we noted in the session about heritage, our culture greatly affects the way we view our identity and the world around us. Our culture can even influence our initial interpretation of Scripture. Often those who have been raised in an individualistic culture view the phrase “in Christ” primarily as an individual experience rather than a corporate one. But that’s not how Paul intended it.

Content

Christian identity is inherently corporate. More often than not, the New Testament writers speak of identity in Christ in plural terms. Almost all of the pronouns in the great identity chapters of Ephesians are in the plural. Even the second person “you” in those sections is plural in the original Greek, which, unlike English, has a different word for “you” singular than “you” plural. Those who grow up in a Western culture are often blind to the corporate way the Bible presents the believer’s identity in Christ:

American culture is obsessed with the individual. Individual rights are the cornerstone of many cultural truths we hold dear. The image of the strong individual moving west of the thirteen original colonies to claim both land and a future is a powerful theme in the early American history. “Rugged American individualism” is a phrase we learn at a young age.

One biblical metaphor for Christian identity that is usually interpreted individually is the “new man” and the “old man.” The New International Version translates Colossians 3:9-10 like this:

Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

“Old self” and “new self” here are literally “old man” and “new man.” The New English Translation renders the passage like this:

Do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with its practices and have been clothed with the new man that is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the one who created it.

“Self” in the New International Version is a clearly individualistic reading of this passage. It’s defensible, especially if one has been steeped in the psychological revolution of the twentieth century. However, there’s reason to believe that we’ve misunderstood that phrase. New Testament scholar Darrell Bock points out that Colossians 3 uses second person plurals (“you” as a group rather than “you” as an individual). Bock thinks the “new man” may refer not to individual believers but to the whole body of a church community. Here he summarizes his analysis:

So the new man is related to Christ and consists of peoples. In other words, it is Christ conceived of as a corporate entity, that is, Christ’s body. Another way to say it is that the new man refers to the new community in Christ that he forms by joining people to himself as they are saved (i.e.,“buried and raised with him,” as Paul already declared in Colossians). An even simpler way to say it is that the new man is the church, the new community in Christ.

If Bock is right, then a core part of a Christian’s identity is his or her connection to a community of other believers. In the same way that our earthly identity involves a nonnegotiable connection to other persons, whom we call our family, our heavenly identity binds us to a heavenly family. We cannot deny that we are and will remain “family” with our biological parents and siblings. While in recent years biological family bonds have been weakened and broken (at least in legal terms), one’s earthly father, mother, and siblings will always be so. Likewise, though believers may avoid contact with a local church community, at the core of their identity they are to be members of a larger community of Christians. When believers fail to be or are restricted from being involved with that corporate experience, then a part of their identity is distorted.

Consider the prayer of Christ on the night of His betrayal:

“My prayer is not for them [his first disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

“Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” (John 17:20-26, emphasis added)

The analogy here is powerful. Just as Jesus’ identity is inextricably linked with His Father’s identity, so a Christian’s identity is to be linked with a community of other believers. Jesus’ prayer is that we be completely one, just as He and God the Father are one. Clearly, intimate involvement in community with other believers is nonnegotiable for Christians.

Conclusion

Having considered a few biblical references to corporate Christian identity, we see that a concept of identity that is limited to an isolated individual is incomplete. As members of the body of Christ, we have the privilege of sharing a heavenly identity that will bind us together for eternity. Our earthly relationships, then, serve as a significant context for our growth and God’s glory.

Biblical Exercise: Colossians 3

Read Colossians 3:1-25. Also, review “A Method for the Biblical Exercises” beginning on page 17.

Observation — “What Do I See?”

1. Who are the persons (including God) in the passage? What is the condition of those persons?

2. What subjects did Paul discuss in the passage? What did he assert?

3. Note the sequence in which Paul made these assertions. (You might number them in order.)

4. What did Paul emphasize? Are there repeated ideas and themes? How are the various parts related?

5. Why did Paul write this passage? (Did he say anything about ways he expected the reader to change after reading it?)

Interpretation Phase 1 — “What Did It Mean Then?”

1. Coming to Terms—Are there any words in the passage that you don’t understand? Write down anything you found confusing about the passage.

2. Finding Where It Fits —What clues does the Bible give about the meaning of this passage?

•  Immediate Context (the passage being studied)
•  Remote Context (passages that come before and after the one being studied)

3. Getting into Their Sandals—An Exercise in Imagination

•  What are the main points of this passage? Summarize or write an outline of the passage.
•  What do you think the recipients of the letter were supposed to take from this passage? How did God, inspiring Paul to write this letter, want this passage to impact the recipients?

Interpretation Phase 2 — “What Does It Mean Now?”

1. What is the timeless truth in the passage? In one or two sentences, write down what you learned about God from Colossians 3.

2. How does that truth work today?

Application — “What Can I Do to Make This Truth Real?”

1. What can I do to make this truth real for myself?

2. For my family?

3. For my friends?

4. For the people who live near me?

5. For the rest of the world?

We want to be men and women of integrity with the Lord, in our homes, with our friends, and in the workplace. But what does that mean? This session will help us get a better grasp on the term integrity.

integrity: (1) soundness of and adherence to moral principle and character; uprightness; honesty; (2) the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished: to preserve the integrity of the empire; (3) a sound, unimpaired, or perfect condition: the integrity of the text; the integrity of a ship’s hull

To have integrity is to live and think according to a standard of truth, which is God’s character as revealed in His Word. Integrity involves wholeness or soundness. It is more than abiding by a list of dos and don’ts. It involves loving God in our hearts by affirming His standards in our minds through godly living with our bodies. Integrity involves a commitment to self-scrutiny to determine whether our affirmed beliefs match our daily lives.

Session Aims

•  Individual Aim: To recognize the disparity between the biblical beliefs you hold and what you practice in daily life.
•  Group Aim: To discuss the challenge of living consistently by biblically grounded beliefs and to be encouraged by past examples of growth.

Preparation

Read Session 2: Belief and Practice.

Read the Life Change: Belief and Practice exercise beginning on page 75.

Introduction

It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks [many intellectuals] out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary; it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.

—C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Sometimes gaining more information about God and the Christian life can be oppressive. If that statement seems strange, consider a consequence of acquiring such knowledge. One major consequence is that learning brings a greater responsibility to live according to that knowledge. If we take our growth seriously, we can leave our sanctuaries many Sunday mornings burdened by an understanding of a new biblical principle that we feel obliged to practice in our lives.The more clearly we understand God’s holiness and His expectation that we become like Him in holiness, the more the pursuit of holiness can seem an overwhelming task. Yet Jesus said that His “yoke is easy” and His “burden is light” (Matthew 11:30).

Though following Jesus certainly involves a yoke and a burden, it is not meant to be overwhelming. As we look at the inner workings of our lives, remember that our Master is “gentle and humble in heart” (Matthew 11:29). If we remember the grace He bestowed upon us by granting us forgiveness, we will experience that grace anew as we honestly see our heart condition. In addition, we may be surprised to see how dramatically our Master has already transformed us from the time we placed our faith in Him.

Content

Theologians use the term sanctification to describe the process whereby Christians become set apart from the world’s ways of thinking and behaving. Sanctification is how Christians grow in holiness. It describes how, for example, a person who approaches life with an attitude of “win at all costs” is transformed into a person who can turn the other cheek. Sanctification is all about life change.

However, if we honestly evaluate our lives, we might find that though we have beliefs about how to live the Christian life, we do not always practice them. While we won’t list in this session all the biblical beliefs that ought to guide our daily practice, we must recognize the importance of biblically grounded beliefs and evaluate our own. The Savior commissioned the apostles to teach new converts “to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20). Jesus doesn’t want us to conform to an ethic generated by the world and our own creativity. Our standard is what is laid down in Scripture, not what we fancy or what the world affirms:

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2)

Life change begins in our minds. Scripture reveals to us the beliefs we should profess.

The second step is equally significant. It is no easy task to practice what we believe, because the world operates by different standards. In addition, practicing biblical beliefs in the midst of a fluid and complex world is enormously challenging. Often, our biblical beliefs don’t adequately permeate our thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors in the course of a day. What we really value at any moment is expressed not exclusively by the beliefs we affirm but also by how we react or respond to our life events, role models, and cultural background —by the strategies we use to cope with life as a whole. We usually live by a mixture of principles acquired from sermons, Bible study, and fellowship, along with approaches we’ve acquired from what the Bible calls “the world” and “the flesh.”

Our past life experience and our culture often hinder us from practicing our beliefs more fully. For example, even though a believer may intellectually understand that God is faithful, if he never experienced consistent care and protection from his own father, he may operate as if God is not trustworthy to provide for his basic needs. Instead of trusting God during a financial crisis, he may react to the crisis with overwhelming anxiety and decide to compromise his Christian business ethics.

Conclusion

No matter how biblically accurate our beliefs are, head knowledge alone cannot make us holy, because our hearts still hold to the patterns of the flesh (Jeremiah 17:9; Romans 7:14-23; James 1:15; 1 John 1:8). Even though we know we are utterly dependent upon God for life, we all try to manage our lives independently of God at some times and to varying degrees. To understand more deeply why we fail to live by our beliefs, in the next session we will look at the biblical concept of the flesh.

Lest we become too discouraged by the gap between our beliefs and practice, we should celebrate our progress with Christ thus far. By evaluating our past attempts at life change, we can better understand how we help and hinder God’s sanctifying work in our lives.

Assignment

Read Session 3: Flesh.

Complete Biblical Exercise: Romans 1 beginning on page 32.

SESSION 4
Seven Deadly Sins

If we desire to pursue integrity wholeheartedly, we must be willing to acknowledge sin’s presence in our lives. The next few sessions are designed to prompt honest assessment of where sin has taken root in us. We expect the Spirit to produce heartfelt conviction in areas of needed change—the kind of conviction that will lead to repentance. As a community, we are called to “confess [our] sins to each other” (James 5:16). In this session we will identify and share areas in which we are most likely to struggle with sin. This will prepare us for the following session, in which we each will write and present an assessment of how one area of sin affects us.

Session Aims

•  Individual Aim: To identify predominant areas of sin in your life and consider how those areas stem from issues of personal identity.
•  Group Aim: To share with one another your areas of greatest struggle and discuss how those areas stem from issues of personal identity.

Preparation

Read Session 4: Seven Deadly Sins.

Complete the Life Change: Seven Deadly Sins exercise beginning on page 82.

Introduction

The list known as the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, anger, greed, lust, sloth, gluttony) was used as early as the sixth century AD to help Christians identify and address the roots of sin in their lives. The list isn’t meant to cover all sin or even the worst sins but rather seven foundational sins that underlie and nourish the rest.

Medieval theologian St. John of the Cross wrote that God digs out these seven root sins most deeply when believers enter a “dark night of the soul.” John said such dark times are inevitable and are opportunities for growth because they force the believer to deal with areas of sin otherwise dormant in them. During such times, according to John, God removes some of the “consolations” the young believer has enjoyed. Young believers are like nursing babies who must mature in their faith, but the process of growth brings trials, including temptations to stumble in these seven ways. Yet while life brings such temptations, believers can be confident that God will remain diligent to continue His work of transformation:

His love is not content to leave us in our weakness, and for this reason he takes us into a dark night. He weans us from all the pleasures [of the Christian life] by giving us dry times and inward darkness. In doing so he is able to take away all these [seven deadly] vices and create virtues within us. Through the dark night pride becomes humility, greed becomes simplicity, wrath becomes contentment, luxury becomes peace, gluttony becomes moderation, envy becomes joy, and sloth becomes strength.

—St. John of the Cross

Content

While categories help us identify areas of greatest struggle, they sometimes overlap. For example, pride is the most fundamental sin and is contained in all sin, as James states:

“God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble.”

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. (James 4:6-8)

Every sin includes an attempt to attain a desire in ways that are contrary to God’s purposes and His ways of attaining those purposes. Consider envy. If people desire others’ recognition, they may spread gossip about someone they envy. Decreasing a competitor’s reputation may seem like a means to increasing one’s own reputation in comparison. In this case, the purpose (obtaining more recognition from others) and the means to that end (spreading gossip) are both contrary to God’s will.

In contrast, consider gluttony. Eating and drinking are not contrary to God’s will. However, the purpose that drives our desire to eat and drink can be. If we are eating and drinking excessively for the purpose of escaping hardships in life, we are gluttons. We should not substitute eating and drinking for dependence on God to sustain us through hardship. The purpose of eating and drinking is to sustain our bodies and, in some situations, to celebrate. (Feasts in the Old Testament and the “potlucks” of the early church [see Acts 2:42-47] show that celebration is a valid reason for eating and drinking.)

Most of the categories of sin occur in human relations. When a person struggles with greed, he desires some material thing that another person has. If he did not observe another person possessing that object, greed might never have sprung up. When a person struggles with anger, she typically is enraged at another person’s actions or words. Therefore, interpersonal communication often plays a central role in sin and virtue. Lying is not on the list of seven deadly sins, perhaps because many of the sins involve deceptive communication. Deceptive communication includes blatant and subtle forms of lying as well as nonverbal communication. Suggestions can be made without words. For example, a person might want others to think he is grieving a coworker’s failure, when in fact he envies his coworker. When he hears of that person’s failure, he may use facial expressions that communicate sadness for the coworker, while inside he is secretly rejoicing.

In The Inferno, Dante Alighieri describes the various levels of hell. In the deepest levels are those who engaged in what Dante calls fraud. Dante means lying, which is the use of communication to deceive others for personal gain or pleasure. The point is that though we may struggle with being deceptive in our communication with others, deception is usually only a means to some other end. There is some larger issue of sin driving that mode of communication.

Conclusion

It is difficult to face our sins honestly and even more difficult to share them honestly. The “Seven Deadly Sins” exercise and the sharing that will take place in the next two sessions are designed to help you identify not only some important areas of sin in your life but also some of the root causes.The exercise will require some thought and creativity, but it is worth the effort.

We must always guard against the temptations presented by our flesh, the world, and our spiritual enemy. But the struggle with sin is not the central focus of the Christian life. The Christian life is not chiefly about avoiding sin but about learning how to love God and people. Keep this in mind as you go through this part of the study.

Assignment

Read Sessions 5 and 6: A Letter from Your Tempter.

Complete the Life Change: A Letter from Your Tempter exercise beginning on page 96.

Half the group members should be prepared to share their tempter letters at the next group session.