This Q and A (with Colin Lagerwall on facebook) on our true identity helped me so much, I wanted to post it here so I can refer to it and ponder these wonderful new truths:
Sparrow: Was the New Man always my real self? Or was the old nature my real nature, and then Christ gave me the new one? I am so trying to understand, having been taught in a traditional way, that I was bad and evil to the core, and then when I believed, Christ came and He was the only good thing about me, even as a Christian, always seeing myself with a low and shameful self-concept..Was the 'old man' my real self before I believed or was it just an illusion, is that what we mean when say false identity, that it never was the real 'us'? Are we saying we were always good or always compatible with God, just didn't know it? Can someone help me, I am trying to unpack the idea of what it really means to be in God's image and likeness..I was always taught it meant that we were rational and spiritual beings..does it also mean good, not evil, at the core? Connected to God? Did we lose that and then Christ restored it to all, or was it only that we thought we lost it, had a darkened mindset through sin, and now we see who we have always been since Christ took away the mindset of sin?
Just trying to figure out which self is the real one, and have I always been good at heart because in His image, and that was covered up by lies?
Or was I totally bad and evil and Jesus had to come kill me off and start over and make me good?
Colin Lagerwall: The lost coin that the widow looked for never lost it's value, neither changed it's shape, the lost sheep was a whole sheep, just as valuable and 'sheepish' as the 'found', the lost boy in the far country was a son in all his sonness, he was just not aware of who he was and the love of his father (he came to himself, the bible says, he saw who he was)
When Jesus was asked about paying taxes, he held up a coin and said 'Who's inscription is on this coin ....give Caesar what belongs to him, and give God what belongs to him, speaking of the image and likeness of God in man'
Sparrow: That is beautiful...that helps me, Colin Lagerwall...we were always valuable, beloved, worth so much in God's eyes, we never stopped being His own because HE made us, right? What about image and likeness, does that mean inherent goodness? Were we always good at the core, through it all, just didn't know it? I don't know why I am so hung up on wondering if we are inherently having goodness at the core, or as Fay says, a core made of Love, right? I need to know that or understand it...I was always taught we were bad at the core, with a sin nature, and Jesus had to root that out and make us good..??
Colin Lagerwall: God calls us to see ourselves as He sees us, valuable, precious, beautiful, .... just as He made us ... We get bent out of shape as we grow up, not knowing His view of us, so we adopt a foreign 'father', or a foreign assessment of ourselves, we get to see ourselves as 'the ugly duckling', which we never were , we are always his much loved sons and daughters ... The Spirit (of Love and Truth) changes that ugly duckling view to what is true, as he has always seen us
These ugly duckling views get very deeply ingrained in us, we develop definite 'identities' that we live by, and these identities are not who we are, they are a kind of 'persona' that we develop, ad this 'persona' is what begins to crumble and 'vanish' as we see more and more the way He looks at us ..... and yes, we do sometimes hold tight onto this false image, because it is the only life we have ever known, and it sometimes needs to be pried out our hands ...
Sparrow: Yes, that is so..the thought/false identity 'seems' to be so truly me and yet, the more I focus on my identity in Christ, it does fall away and freedom comes!..I was thinking about it and just feeling God's presence over me and the thoughts came to me that there wasn't anything inherently wrong with the human race, only that we were infected with this false mindset of separation and inferiority and etc., and this caused lots of problems, but Jesus killed that off at the cross - HE wasn't saying we were bad and needed to die but that we were infected with poison and the poison needed to be removed, and that happened through death..so we could rise up with Him our clean and beautiful selves, now not infected anymore, now healthy and strong and released from the prison of sin sickness, fear, loneliness, and other dark feelings..almost like a mentally ill person being cured and discovering who they really are for the first time...?
Colin Lagerwall: Exactly !
Sparrow: I finally start to see it!! Wow...I praise God so much right now! The good news just keeps getting better and better! I want to just bask in this amazing truth!
Colin Lagerwall: The ugly duckling was never a duck, but a beautiful swan all along
Sparrow: Was always a swan, never an ugly duck..what a relief!
We were made by Love, in Love, as Love, for Love! Evil was always a false identity, Love was always our true identity..for we are in the image and likeness of God, and God IS Love, so since His Spirit is at our core, for He breathed His Spirit in to give us life, Love is at our core! That wonderful divine substance that made us never stopped being there, it is the image on the coin that never was removed no matter how much dirt from the outside world coated it or hid it from view! Thus the gospel is 'Christ in you, the hope of glory!