Identity, Sanctification and Transformation

I am going to go out on a bit of a limb, but it is on my heart to write a little bit about how we have typically understood sanctification. Many have spent their entire spiritual lives attempting to mortify the flesh and clean themselves up, all under the assumption that their regeneration is ultimately dependent on their own efforts.

I am not pointing any fingers here, because this was the first four years of my own Christian life. I wanted, more than anything else, to know the newness of life that Paul was talking about in Romans 6:4. I wanted a deep and lasting transformation in my character and personality, and I worked to effect it. Yet the struggle always seemed to be in vain. Condemnation would sweep back in as I tried and failed over and over again in my effort to stay sober, happy, and to not look at women the wrong way. I felt completely trapped by my inability to live the Christian life. I knew there were promises of love, joy, and peace, but I only experienced these as elusive and fleeting. My "growth" was a continual experience of discouragement.

The picture of this struggle to resist sin and to “crucify the flesh” has been captured clearly by the “Romans 7 Man.” Paul, in Romans 7, describes himself as a “wretch,” and as having “the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” Romans 7 is touted as a prime example of the issue of the believer’s “sin nature,” which necessitates the “sanctification process” in which we are constantly striving to be more loving, holy, and godly. We have consistently touted Mr. Romans 7 as our example of the standard Christian life of trying and falling short. We have so identified ourselves with this passage that to think the Christian life could be easy or fun seems delusional. Christian life has been described ad nauseum as a continual process of “taking up your cross” and “dying to yourself” to deal with Mr. Sin, the Romans 7 Man, and be sanctified. For probably every genuine believer, along with conversion to Christ came a deep seated awareness of shortcomings. (Note: this is not wrong in and of itself.) This has driven people into “troubleshooting mode,” where careful inventory is taken of past sins, generational curses, vows, etc. Great lengths are taken to find the “roots” of sins and negative patterns, which are usually then confessed and renounced. In most circles, it is common to hear the sin nature described as something that is still alive, and as being something that the believer is ultimately responsible to crucify so as to become more like Jesus.

I am not the Romans 7 man, and neither are you.

It is crucial to understand Romans 7 in the context of the surrounding chapters.

In Romans 6, Paul issues us a death certificate. “Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life… For we know that our old man was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.” (Romans 6:3-4, 6-7) The old nature that kept us locked up under sin and the law has died with Christ. Paul echoes this in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ.” (emphasis mine) Anything that could possibly hold us back from thinking, acting, talking, and relating to God and others the way Jesus does was slain with Jesus on Calvary. Read in the context of Romans 6 and Romans 8, it is apparent that in Romans 7 Paul is describing his life before his revelation of our righteousness in Christ. Paul is describing his life when he saw his identity, his righteousness, and his standing with God as a product of his own religious performance. Paul was recognizing his own helplessness to contribute anything at all to his standing with God, or to produce real or lasting change in his own heart and life. To identify in any way at all with Romans 7 Man is to backpedal right over the cross, ignoring the reality of what was accomplished in Romans 6, and stealing the context of our practical Christian living as taught in Romans 8. If you are a born again believer who is experiencing a Romans 7 Christianity, it is not because you are a Romans 7 Man; it is because you don’t understand that you have died. Could it be that our apparent propensity for sin after our conversion results not from some “sinful nature” that we drag around with us, but rather from a lack of understanding or belief about what was accomplished at Calvary? Could it be that when Paul admonished the Romans to “consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus,” it was because that was, in fact, the only accurate way to communicate the reality of what occurred at salvation? Transformation is not our job; it is the effortless result of faith recognizing the reality that you are already dead. If we had not truly died in Christ at His cross, then for us to “consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” is an exercise of pure delusion.

Paul understood the mystery of the Gospel as being “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27) He described his spiritual life in Galatians 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.” Paul told the Colossians, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. … Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” (Colossians 3:4, 9-10) In Romans 12:2, Paul describes the transformation of the believers life: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…” And lest we look at the renewal of the mind as “our part,” Paul reminds us that we already have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 1:16, Philippians 2:5) Even the renewal of our minds comes as the effortless by product of the revelation of our union with Christ in His death! Far from providing license to sin, this understanding of identity raises the bar for holiness in the believer's life, and then enables them to walk it out through simple trust in the finished work of the cross.

You and I have died, and more than that, you and I are now alive as new creations in Christ. Old things have passed away; behold, all things are new. We are holy and righteous, perfect and blameless in Jesus Christ. Let’s simply believe it, and watch as the Word of God bears the fruit the fruit of righteousness unto holiness in our lives.

Re-Thinking Prayer

When I began my Christian walk, I was (and still am) blessed to be a part of a church where prayer was (and still is) highly valued. Any minister at our church can attest to the role that prayer plays in our functioning as a church body. When the church has a decision to make, a challenge to face, or a paradigm shift to grow through, the church, and especially the leadership, will pray earnestly. The church prays, fasts, waits, and listens to the voice of the Holy Spirit in every major decision, and often the minor ones. It was in this environment that I learned to interact with God personally, and through discipleship as well as personal experience came to know the “friend we have in Jesus” in a way I didn’t know was possible for the “No Name Brand” believer.

What I was not prepared for, however, was the roller coaster effect prayer had on my life. I would enjoy a season of experiencing dramatic, immediate answers to prayer, full of spiritual highs, followed by seasons of apparent spiritual drought, with its accompanying feelings of disappointment and spiritual inadequacy. During the seasons where I saw God moving visibly, I felt unstoppable, and my faith rose on the swell of answered prayer and personal testimonies of God’s work. When my prayer life seemed dry, however, I would turn back into the “pre-encounter” Gideon, minding my own business and hoping the enemy would leave me alone.

Seasons of fervent prayer turned into seasons of faithless introspection as I tried to figure out where I had gone wrong. My alone time routinely became a time of self-diagnosis and navel-gazing, trying to get my engine to turn over so I could pretend my way through another work day. Conversational relationship with God became one sided as the desert swallowed up the oasis that had previously been my prayer life.

I want to share what I have learned through this, but I want to be completely clear: I am not claiming in any way to have easy ongoing success. What I am sharing are truths that have consistently set my prayer life straight in the midst of a “dry season.” These are the truths that I go back to and renew my mind with when I notice my mindset reverting to a faith-less perspective towards God and towards prayer. As I have practiced living in the continual recognition of these truths, my experience of God has become more consistent, and my belief in God’s faithfulness has become more resolute.

I have become convinced that the desert experience is not the will of God for the believer’s interaction with Him. In John 4, Jesus makes a comparison between wells and rivers. The woman at the well is interested in knowing if Jesus will endorse her “well” of choice, the Samaritan high place of Mount Gerazim, or if Jesus will insist on the Jewish “well” of spiritual experience, Mount Zion. This analogy can be applied just as easily today: unbelievers and believers alike have “wells” that they frequent when they experience spiritual or emotional fatigue. Some wells do, in fact, offer living water, and some offer imitations of different qualities. It seems that Jesus, however, has something completely different in mind. “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14) Jesus undoubtedly has the same picture in mind in John 7:37-38: “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”” This talk of rivers is a far cry from the well-language used by the woman at the well. Jesus seems to be promising an experience that is a little more sustained and intense than can be contained in a half hour quiet time.

So what is the condition to experience this kind of personal revival? What pre requisites does Jesus set for us to “experience more of God?”  Jesus makes it clear that our continual, conscious saturation with the Holy Spirit comes to us by the exact same means of our salvation: by grace, through faith. “”Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive…” (John 7:38-39)

Paul explains the same thing to the Galatians: “Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” (Galatians 3:2) “Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” (Galatians 3:5) We consciously experience God’s presence to the degree that we recognize He is in us! While God does choose to manifest Himself to us in special ways at different times, we are freed from a dependence on those “rainfalls” for our spiritual growth: God has put a river inside of every believer. To stay full of the presence of God, we don’t need to strive for more of God. Instead, we need to simply believe the specific promise of God that there is no more of God to have than God has already put inside of each of us. As we begin to believe this promise, our perception of lack will begin to fade as we experience the reality of the Holy Spirit’s presence in us.

As we understand this reality, our language towards God will begin to shift. Instead of praying from a perception of lack, we will begin to speak the language of gratitude, recognizing our endowment with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3) Insecurity in God’s presence will be replaced by knowledge of our worth and acceptance in the Beloved as children of God. (1 John 3:1) A conscience stained by the past will be cleansed with the confidence of knowing Christ’s righteousness. (2 Cor 5:21) A plea for personal transformation will turn into praise because of the recognition that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. (2 Corinthians 5:17) Instead of our spiritual disciplines, our exclusive boast will be in the cross of Christ, and instead of promoting self help products and seminars, we will become walking testimonies to the power of the message of Christ and Him crucified.

Prayer, at its heart, is our personal experience of the Gospel, day by day, moment by moment. It is a learning process. In prayer, we are learning to relate to God not on the basis of either our shortcomings or our successes, but on the success of the cross in securing God’s very real presence in us.  (Colossians 1:27) In learning prayer, we learn how to relate to every other area of our lives through a Gospel lens, and begin to live as the living epistles who God has made us to be.

If you are in a dry season and praying for spiritual rain, it is my prayer for you that you would discover (or re-discover) the river that God has already put inside you, and that you would learn to drink from the river whether the rain comes or not. As we collectively discover this river of life, a dramatic difference will emerge between the spiritually and the naturally minded people. As wells dry up, and as there is more and more time between rainfalls, there will be an increasing necessity and demand for spiritual life that is independent on any external source, and our rivers will become dramatic evidence of God’s presence in our lives.

The flesh is not the problem.

"Now if all were included in his death they were equally included in his resurrection. The unveiling of his love defines human life! Whatever reference we could have of ourselves outside of our association with Christ is no longer relevant."
"This is our radical and defining moment! No label that could possibly previously identify someone carries any further significance! Even our pet doctrines of Christ are redefined. Whatever we knew about him historically or sentimentally is challenged by this conclusion."
"Now, in the light of your co inclusion in his death and resurrection, whoever you thought you were before, in Christ you are a brand new person! The old ways of seeing yourself and everyone else are over. Acquaint yourself with the new!"
 2 Corinthians 5:15-17, Mirror Translation

As believers, we are called to no longer allow the world to shape our perception of our identities, but rather to find our identities in Jesus Christ and in His finished work. As we see in the above Scripture, God absolutely redefined humanity through the cross of Christ, and through faith we partake in the cross and in the power of Christ's resurrection and experience it as reality in our own lives.

However, a problem arises when we start to view identity in Christ as a goal that we pursue. We can easily fall into a form of humanism when we look at identity as something that we build, or see it as something that is in any way contingent on our performance. This warps our perspective, and causes us to see Christian life as something that we strive to live, instead of an exchanged life where Christ is living his life through us.

This usually occurs when we come to see Jesus only "historically or sentimentally," and view him merely as an example for us to emulate.

Jesus is not just our example.

Jesus is our life.

Our pursuit of Christ results only from his pursuit of us.

Our identity was never anything we could earn, maintain, or build; instead, it is a gift that we have already been given in Christ. This is because of his work, plus nothing.

Our identity is not even contingent on our own belief. We don't have our identity in Christ because of our belief; rather, our belief is the recognition and acknowledgement of the identity we were already born again into in Christ.

Real faith, "abiding," recognizes the reality of what Jesus accomplished, and lives life from the revelation of that truth through the work of the Holy Spirit. For example: we are not born knowing about gravity - but it is still real. Through training and experience we perceive the reality of gravity, and literally learn to walk because of it. In the same way, before we can walk as sons of God the way Jesus did, we need to recognize the reality and the implications of the cross, and of our death and resurrection with Christ. We need to see how the cross reversed our identity and our nature as sinners, and brought us into a new nature as sons with the heart and mind of Christ.

Jesus died for us, to pay the debt for our sins. He also died as us. In Christ, the old self, the flesh, has passed away, and the new has come. A reason we often don't experience or walk in this newness of life is because we fail to recognize this as a reality; we will fail to walk in the new if we believe that we are still our old, sinful, incapable selves. If you view yourself more as a "forgiven sinner" than you do as a "new creation," you are effectively placing more confidence in your ability to displease God than you do in Jesus' ability to produce righteousness in your life. Confidence in the flesh's ability to displease God is still confidence in the flesh! Thank God, the flesh is dead!

It is critical that we understand our new identity. Misunderstanding or misinterpreting this will result in us specializing in "flesh management" - creating rules and regulations to "die to self" and to "mortify the flesh."
Paul speaks to this in Colossians 2:23: "These (regulations) indeed have an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh." While accountability and healthy boundaries can be helpful in growth, we need to recognize their insufficiency in producing righteousness. Only the understanding of our own death, burial, and resurrection of Christ gives us the power to walk righteously. When we understand how dead the flesh is, we can leave it behind and walk as sons.

During a cell meeting, I was praying and saw a picture of myself dragging around a decaying corpse as I went through my day. People would stop and ask me what it was that I was carrying, and I would reply, "Can't you see? It's me!" When we see our death with Christ, we are absolutely set free from our sinful, anxious, depressed selves! Now that I know that the corpse is not me, I am free to leave that dead man behind.

"The terms co-crucified and co-alive define me now. Christ in me and I in him! His sacrificial love is evidence of his persuasion of my righteousness!"
Galatians 2:20, Mirror Translation

"See yourself co-raised with Christ! Now ponder with persuasion the consequence of your co-inclusion in him. Relocate yourselves mentally! Engage your thoughts with throne room realities where you are co-seated with Christ in the executive authority of God's right hand.
Colossians 3:1, Mirror Translation

Becoming what I am.

Over the past several months, with the help of some honest and loving friends, I have been experiencing a paradigm shift in my understanding of what it means to be a genuinely effective representative of Jesus Christ. 

Let me explain.

For the last three years, I have been doing the best I knew how to do to grow as Christian. I would read my Bible consistently, and  at times compulsively. I would fast, pray, and study. I would, and still do, volunteer in my local church and in small group ministries. However, I rarely felt like any of the disciplines that I was partaking in were bringing me any more certainty of my relationship with God, or of my belonging in the body. Instead, I felt that these disciplines were a search for an elusive confidence in God that I could not articulate or reproduce from the paradigm of "building relationship with God" as the primary goal.

I would experience this confidence at times, and it was exhilarating. Divine appointments would occur almost naturally, people would experience Jesus, and the Gospel would be proclaimed. However, I did not know how to walk in this consistently. In spite of experiencing a growing relationship with God, I did not feel like I had the courage, character, or gifting to consistently represent Jesus the way I saw the Scriptures calling me to.

As disciples of Jesus, we have the privilege, opportunity, honour, and responsibility of both presenting Jesus and representing Jesus to people who are alienated from and at enmity with the Father.

We present Jesus through clear preaching of the Word of God.

We represent Jesus through the way that we speak, act, relate to the world around us.

In Ephesians 4:12-15 we see a clear delineation between the job descriptions of the five-fold ministry, who minister primarily to the church, and the saints, who present and represent Christ to the world. Our responsibility as church leadership is described as following: "...to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ...".  God has called us to represent Jesus in every way, and for the church to train and build up the body to this end.

James 1:22  thee difference between a "personal faith," and a belief system that transforms the life of the believer. "But be doers of the world, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in the mirror, For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like, But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing." These verses give us an incredible insight into how to read the Bible. When we look into the law of liberty, we are seeing who God has already made us to be in Christ. 

The crucial issue for us as believers in learning to represent the King in character ("fruit of the Spirit") and gifting ("gifts of the Spirit") is identity.  For better or for worse, the way we think and what we believe about ourselves manifest in every interaction we have. In Romans 12, Paul exhorts us be not "conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds," and "to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." If our thinking about ourselves has been not been renewed to what the Word of God has said about us in Christ, we will represent Christ from a place of brokenness and striving towards "a better relationship with God". This accounts for so much of the frustration and lack of effective ministry that we have experienced as we have tried to share Christ without knowing our identity in Him. On the other hand, if our minds have been renewed, and we know and understand the new relationship with God and the new nature that has already been given to us in Christ, we will represent Christ by default, walking in a genuine and loving confidence towards God and people, because of the understanding that "as he is so also are we in this world."


The purpose of this blog is to share what I see when I "look into the mirror," and to share testimonies of my successes and failures as I learn to be a "doer" and begin to live from my true identity as a "new man" in Christ. My purpose is not to bash the church or other believers, but rather to encourage others to look into the Word to find who they truly are, so that the world can see Jesus manifest in our lives as we learn our identities in Him.


In Jesus

Brahm van der Breggen



PS - Several members of my cell have also requested that I put together a reading list from Scripture to learn how to relate to ourselves from the perspective of the finished work; over the following weeks I will be posting a weekly reading plan with a brief study guide to help us begin to ask the right questions as we approach the Word and discover the significance of the cross to our daily lives and relationships. My hope is that this blog will be a place where our cell can dialogue throughout the week as we learn and grow in the knowledge of God in Christ.