Identity in Christ

Cover Article

by Michael Jones · Week of June 7, 2026

Imagine standing in a room of mirrors, each one reflecting a different version of you, one shaped by your job title, another by your bank account, another by the number of people who approve of you. The world hangs these mirrors everywhere and whispers, “This is who you are.” We chase the reflections, exhausting ourselves to polish an image that shifts with every failure, every rejection, every passing year. But here is the breathtaking truth the gospel announces: God has shattered every false mirror. Paul declares, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is not a makeover; it is a resurrection. The person you were (defined by shame, driven by performance, enslaved to approval) has been buried in the waters of baptism (Romans 6:3–4), and someone entirely new has risen in that person’s place. You are not an improved version of your old self. You are a new creation, handcrafted by the God who spoke galaxies into existence and yet knows the number of hairs on your head (Matthew 10:30).

So what does this new identity look like? Open the treasure chest of Ephesians 1:3–14, and the riches spill out faster than you can gather them. You are “blessed…with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (v. 3). You were “chosen…before the foundation of the world” to be “holy and blameless” before Him (v. 4). You have been “predestined…for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ” (v. 5). You possess “redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (v. 7). And you have been “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance” (vv. 13–14). Notice the verbs: chosen, adopted, redeemed, sealed. Not one of them is something you earned. Not one depends on your resume, your appearance, or your popularity. Every single one flows from “the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us” (vv. 7–8). You did not qualify for adoption; the King chose you. You did not purchase your own redemption; the price was the blood of His Son (1 Peter 1:18–19). Your identity is not something you build; it is something you receive with open, grateful hands.

Here is where identity becomes transformation. Paul urges us to “put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life…and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22–24). This is not self-improvement through willpower; it is becoming on the outside what God has already declared us to be on the inside. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2). As we soak our minds in His Word, as we gather each Lord’s Day around His table to remember His broken body and shed blood (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 11:23–26), as we lift our voices together in songs of praise that teach and admonish one another (Colossians 3:16; Ephesians 5:19), we are slowly, steadily being “transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). The process is not instant, but the direction is sure. Every act of obedient faith (every prayer whispered in the dark, every temptation resisted, every neighbor served) is a step further into the person God has already named you to be.

So the next time the world slides a mirror in front of you and says, “This is all you are,” close your eyes and listen for a different voice, the voice of the One who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9). When failure shouts that you are worthless, the cross whispers, “You are redeemed.” When rejection says you are unwanted, the empty tomb declares, “You are adopted.” When anxiety insists that your future is uncertain, the Spirit within you testifies, “You are sealed” (Ephesians 1:13–14). “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1). You are not the sum of your worst decisions. You are not whatever the crowd says about you. You are a blood-bought, heaven-bound, Spirit-sealed child of the living God. That identity cannot be taken from you, because it was never based on you in the first place. It rests on the unchanging character of God and the finished work of Christ. Walk in it. Live from it. Let it reshape everything. - MJ

Other congregations are welcome to reprint this. It may be reproduced in another congregation’s bulletin or newsletter without asking permission. An acknowledgement of Orange View Church of Christ is appreciated but not required.

Bible Questions & Answers

Does demon possession still happen today?

It is a question that surfaces more often than we might expect, and Scripture answers it in a way that should quiet our fears rather than stir them. We can begin with what is plain: demons are real, and they are real across the whole of Scripture. Even the Old Testament knows of evil spirits that afflict and deceive (the spirit that tormented Saul in 1 Samuel 16:14–23, the lying spirit sent against Ahab’s prophets in 1 Kings 22:19–23), and it warns Israel against sacrificing to them (Deuteronomy 32:17). Yet when we turn the page into the Gospels, something shifts dramatically. Suddenly the accounts are crowded with men and women held under the open control of unclean spirits, and with Jesus driving them out by a word. The change is too sharp to be accidental, and understanding why it happened is the key to the whole question.

The concentration belonged to the arrival of the kingdom of God. When Jesus cast out demons, He told the crowds plainly what they were witnessing: “If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:28). Every deliverance was a public sign that the King had come and that the strong man was being bound (Matthew 12:29). That same authority carried on through the apostolic age, in Samaria under Philip (Acts 8:7), in Philippi where Paul commanded a spirit of divination out of a slave girl (Acts 16:16–18), and in Ephesus where God worked extraordinary things through the hands of Paul (Acts 19:11–12). The dramatic ministry of casting out demons, in other words, clustered tightly around the in-breaking of the gospel and the years in which that gospel was being confirmed.

This is the heart of the matter. The power to expel demons by command was one of the confirmatory, miraculous works of that founding era. Like prophecy, tongues, and gifts of healing, it authenticated the message while the New Testament revelation was still being given, and Scripture is clear that such gifts were temporary, destined to cease “when the perfect comes” and the partial passes away (1 Corinthians 13:8–10). We should not expect to find that apostolic sign among us today, any more than we expect to raise the dead with a word. But if that is so, a sincere believer may wonder, are we then left exposed to the powers of darkness? On two counts, the answer is a settled no.

The first reason is the dearest, and it belongs to everyone who is in Christ. The faithful Christian is not an empty house waiting to be occupied. When a person is buried with Christ in baptism and raised to walk in new life, God Himself takes up residence within (Acts 2:38; 1 Corinthians 6:19). Paul says it plainly: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). The believer is purchased property, bought by the blood of Christ and sealed by the Spirit as God’s own (Ephesians 1:13–14). Ownership by God and ownership by a demon are mutually exclusive, and a demon cannot seize what the living God has already claimed and filled. Whatever possession looked like in the days of the Gospels, it was never the portion of a soul in whom the Spirit of God dwells.

The second reason is that God’s people were never dependent on miraculous gifts to meet the demonic in the first place. Consider how the Lord Himself handled one stubborn case: He pointed not to a special endowment but to simple dependence on God, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer” (Mark 9:29). And when the New Testament equips the ordinary believer for spiritual conflict, it never hands us a sign-gift. It hands us this: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). It hands us the whole armor of God, that we “may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11). And it hands us the name and finished work of Christ, who “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them” (Colossians 2:15). Not one of these was a miraculous gift, and not one of them has passed away.

So whatever spiritual opposition a believer may face, whether temptation, deception, or harassment, the response is the one the church has always had: submission to God, resistance grounded in His Word, steady prayer, and confidence in the One who has already won. “Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). We are not left to face the darkness with empty hands, and we do not need the apostles’ sign-gifts, because we are sealed by the Spirit, covered by the blood, and standing behind the finished victory of Christ. The enemy is real, but he is defeated, and the One who lives in you is greater than the one who prowls outside. - MJ