Who we are in Christ, our true identity, is a crucial understanding that we need to have if we are to represent Jesus well in the world. This devotional is intended to offer practical help for us as His witnesses.

First, I want to look at the purpose of God’s will through the Cross. When Christ found me, the message of the Cross I was presented with was (in a nutshell) that Jesus died on the Cross to save sinners, of whom I was one, and that if I said a prayer I would be saved from an eternity in hell and instead would go to heaven when I died. Whilst this is true for us when we become Christians, I’ve come to understand and believe that the good news of the Cross is so much more than that.

Let’s go back to Genesis 1:26 where God, speaking to the Son and Holy Spirit, said, “Let us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness;” When they looked at Adam (mankind) they saw themselves in him. Their image in Adam formed the basis of mankind’s created identity. We looked like them!

Genesis 2:25 tells us that before the fall Adam was naked and unashamed but after the fall, Genesis 3:9-10 says that he saw that he was naked and hid because he was afraid. What had changed? He now saw a different image of himself.

In Matthew 18:11 (NASB), Jesus said that the Son Of Man had come to save that which was lost. He didn’t say that He came to save those who were lost. I suggest that Jesus wasn’t just referring to lost souls here but also to man’s created image which was now lost in the sense that it was so marred and disfigured by sin that Adam could no longer see it. It had been replaced by a different image which gave mankind a different identity, that of a sinner.

Tomorrow we’ll look at what mankind’s original image looked like.

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NEWBOLD BAPTIST CHURCH