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Spirit-Led Identity Change
Western culture places a high value on a character trait called ‘authenticity.’ It is an approach to life that is very much tied into the way we view our identities. I will spend some time in this chapter looking at what it means and what the Bible has to say about it.
In the modern definition of authenticity, a person is authentic when they express their inner spirit and soul honestly. If they have a reason to be joyful, they share their joy. If they feel justified in being angry, they express their anger. If they feel homosexual, they act on their desires. If they feel they are a woman trapped in a man’s body, they express their “true inner nature” regardless of their body.
If they don’t do this, they risk being hypocritical. According to modern authenticity, what you see should be what you get. Our words, our actions, and our inner sense of who we are at our deepest core should all agree.
The Bible teaches that there is a problem with this sort of authenticity. It is that our human nature is fallen, so apart from the Spirit of God giving us a new nature, our authentic self is a slave to sin.
What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin.
As it is written:
“There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
They have all turned aside;
They have together become unprofitable;
There is none who does good, no, not one.”
“Their throat is an open tomb;
With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;
“The poison of asps is under their lips”;
“Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
Destruction and misery are in their ways;
And the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
According to these verses, it is not enough to be sincere and transparent. If we sincerely and transparently sin, we have still brought damage into the world and are guilty before God.
Our belief that to do anything else would be hypocritical doesn’t make up for that. Our claim that we are just “being who we are” isn’t an excuse for it. We are responsible to recognize that we deserve judgement for who we are at the core of our being, and we should humbly turn to God for His solution.
The Bible uses the term ‘flesh’ to describe human nature apart from the Holy Spirit’s influence, and in Galatians 5, it gives a list of the works of the flesh. It is not an exhaustive list, but it contains representative examples of what human beings tend to do when we don’t live out God’s answers:
Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, …
This first group listed is sexual sins. Without the grace of God, human sexuality tends to head in the wrong direction. While sex was created to be a delightful part of forming families and producing children, sin leads us to make it something different. Rather than serving a beneficial service for all of mankind (creating a family), it devolves into a tool for selfish personal fulfillment.
When societies reject the truth of God, as western societies are increasingly doing, we have no good answers for the strength of human sexuality. As a result, we often grow to accept and praise the sexual works of the flesh. We may even think of them as virtues, because they express our “true inner selves.”
It makes sense that we would make this mistake. We lack the wisdom to see our actions in the light of truth, and we lack the power to change them, so it feels pointless and cruel to constrain ourselves. Who wants to submit to a moral obligation that looks unnecessary and feels just about impossible?
Our modern concept of authenticity plays into this. In a world that sees being true to yourself as one of the highest virtues, it seems wrong to live a life that feels (to us) like a lie. Why not throw out moral rules that don’t match our feelings?
Apart from Jesus I would have found this approach extremely appealing. My sexuality was such a strong part of me that steering it in a healthy direction felt unbearable. It would have been far easier to redefine “a healthy direction” to mean “a healthy direction for me.” Then I could have said that the strain of resisting my desires was so psychologically damaging that I shouldn’t attempt to do it.
I needed a relationship with the true and living God in which He filled me with His Spirit. That gave me the inner wisdom and strength to grow into a new authentic self who could walk through the difficulty of embracing God’s plan.
…idolatry, sorcery,
The second group of works of our flesh is false gods and sinful spiritual practices. We were created to know our Creator, and when we live apart from Him, we naturally seek other gods to fill the void created by His absence. These other gods may be false deities, celebrity idols, rock gods, or anything else we elevate to the place that only the True God can fill. All of them may temporarily comfort us, but they can never truly replace Him.
…hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, …envy, murders
God is our Father, and He created people to be in His family. He wants to supply what we need and teach us to be content. But when we don’t know Him, we seek contentment in wrong ways, and this can lead us to fight and strive to fulfil our desires in ways that hurt others. The resulting struggle produces hatred, contentions, jealousies, outburst of wrath, and envy in many (and murders in a few). The increasing nastiness and violence we see in society today is a natural result of us trying to be our authentic selves apart from God.
…selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, …
American society is currently described as ‘polarized,’ which is a modern term for selfish ambitions, dissentions and heresies. The social math behind this is simple. In our flesh, each of us has our own flavor of authentic self, and apart from God, each of us will tend to fight to make sure that our flavor wins out over others. This can only produce polarization, infighting, and the disintegration of civil life.
The result will become what the philosopher Thomas Hobbes called “the war of all against all.” In this “war,” a tempting way to solve conflicts is to turn to the solution Hobbes taught: to put in place an oppressive ruler who keeps peace by deciding who wins and who losses. We will reason that it is better to live under one bully than to be stuck in a neighborhood of competing bullies constantly fighting for control.[21]
A better answer is for large numbers of people to surrender to the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. When that happens, the love of God can bring a health that human nature could never imitate. We will learn God’s way to balance justice, mercy, and love for our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48). Though this won’t bring utopia, it will be a big improvement over both the war of all against all or the painful rod of tyranny.
In a lifestyle where each person is competing to be their authentic self, personal happiness and satisfaction can become the goal of life, and drugs and partying provide a short-term way to reach that goal. They allow us to control our inner feelings without the difficulty of building a life of purpose and joy expressed with others. Unfortunately, they also bring waste and destruction.
The works of the flesh are expressions of our feelings and desires without Jesus, and when they are combined with an emphasis on worldly authenticity, they will be considered virtues. The goal won’t be to deny our feelings and desires for the sake of God and others. It will be to make sure our authentic self wins out over the feelings and desires of others, who we assume must be either hypocritical or evil.
With the world around us having such a heavy emphasis on this misled form of authenticity, I am tempted to give up on the idea of authenticity altogether. Nevertheless, I believe we can practice a form of Christian authenticity based in the belief that Jesus has given us a new nature.
And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
We are born again and made alive by the Spirit of God when we have faith in Jesus. We are no longer just a natural human; our flesh has been crucified through being joined with the crucified Lord, and we have been raised with Him to be people who live in the Spirit.
Because of this, our inner being has changed, and our actions should reflect who we now are. We should walk in the Spirit. We can no longer be content with simply following sin into the works of the flesh.
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? (emphasis added)
Paul’s point is that Christians are not just natural human beings. Our old nature has been crucified with Christ, and the Spirit of God has raised us to a new kind of life. Because of this, our lifestyle should reflect the supernatural connection with Him that is in our hearts. We should no longer live in sin. We will find true fulfilment by walking in God’s righteousness.
As a result, Christians are their true authentic selves when they express the righteous character of Jesus. To continue to live as we once did would contradict who we have been recreated to be.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
We are called to walk in faith-filled authenticity. It is a lifestyle of being true to who God has made us to be. In the rest of this book, when I refer to a Christian being their authentic self, I will mean the following: Christians are authentic when they stand on the truth that they are a new creation in Jesus (Step 3 in chapter 4).
They hold to this even when it leads them to act contrary to what worldly authenticity would dictate. For example, a Christian who struggles with a form of sexuality that God’s word calls a sin is being authentic when he or she chooses to deny him-or-her-self, even though worldly authenticity would tell them to follow their inner longings.
Christians can also be honest about how difficult this choice can be. Our flesh continues to war against the Spirit, and this can produce pain.
For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.
It is not a lack of faith to be honest about how hard it can be to follow Jesus; it is only a lack of faith when we give up. He never said our lives would be easy; in fact, He said the opposite:
”Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
The end result of Christian authenticity is a lifestyle that increasingly expresses the heart of God in the fruits of the Spirit.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. …
In summary, authenticity is basically honesty, so it isn’t bad in itself. The problem is that our current culture lacks the wisdom to know that human nature is fallen and we deserve judgment. It also doesn’t believe that God can give us a life that is far better.
But if we see ourselves in the light of His word, we will see that our only good option is to fall on our faces and surrender to Jesus so that His new nature within us will produce a new authentic self: an honest expression of the fruit of His Spirit.
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