What does the Bible say about identity? – Part 1

In this episode of the Denison Forum Podcast, Dr. Mark Turman sits down with Dr. Ryan Denison, Senior Editor for Theology at Denison Forum and co-author of their new resource, Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. Together, they explore what Scripture teaches about identity, how sin distorts our understanding of ourselves, and why recognizing both personal and collective identity in Christ is vital in today’s culture. In a world that prioritizes individualism, they offer biblical insight to help us live as salt and light, reflecting God’s truth in a culture searching for meaning.

Powered by RedCircle

Topics

• (03:06): Defining identity from a biblical perspective
• (05:49): The biblical foundation of identity
• (13:04): The impact of sin on identity
• (20:42): The collective nature of sin and identity
• (39:42): The role of the church and community in shaping identity
• (50:17): Conclusion and next steps

Resources

• Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters
• Identity Simplified Resource from Christian Parenting 
• What does the Bible say about identity? – Part 2

About Dr. Ryan Denison

Ryan Denison, PhD, is the Senior Editor for Theology at Denison Forum. Ryan writes The Daily Article every Friday and contributes writing and research to many of the ministry’s productions. He holds a PhD in church history from BH Carroll Theological Institute after having earned his MDiv at Truett Seminary. He’s authored The Path to Purpose, What Are My Spiritual Gifts?, How to Bless God by Blessing Others, 7 Deadly Sins, and coauthor of Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters and has contributed writing or research to every Denison Forum book.

About Dr. Mark Turman

Mark Turman, DMin, serves as the Executive Director of Denison Forum, where he leads with a passion for equipping believers to navigate today’s complex culture with biblical truth. He is best known as the host of The Denison Forum Podcast and the lead pastor of the Possum Kingdom Chapel, the in-person congregation of Denison Ministries.

Dr. Turman is the coauthor of Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. He earned his undergraduate degree from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and received his Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He later completed his Doctor of Ministry at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco.

Before joining Denison Forum, Mark served as a pastor for 35 years, including 25 years as the founding pastor of Crosspoint Church in McKinney, Texas.

Mark and his high school sweetheart, Judi, married in 1986. They are proud parents of two adult children and grandparents to three grandchildren.

About Denison Forum

Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, The Denison Forum Podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited. 

[00:00:00] Dr. Mark Turman: Welcome back. You’re listening to the Denison Forum podcast. I’m Mark Turman host for today’s conversation, and sitting down again with Dr. Ryan Denison, our senior editor for Theology at Denison Forum, and we’re gonna have a little bit of a unique conversation as we seek to just bring some clarifying.

Insight into an important topic today. We want to help you to be equipped and full of hope that God would enable you to be salt and light wherever you are, and that that means that we obviously need to think biblically so that we can then live the kind of beautiful lives that God wants us to live and hopefully serve in really effective ways.

To make the world a more flourishing place until Jesus comes. And so today’s topic is one that we’ve put together a resource around called who Am I, what The Bible Says about identity and why it matters. Ryan and I have been working on this for the better part of a year, and this resource is about to release, and we wanted to just take some time in this podcast and in a.

Second episode that will follow this when this conversation will be broken up into two parts. But we just wanted to kind of give you our thoughts about why we did this project and give you some insight. Hopefully that will pique your interest and cause you to look at the book that we’ve written, but more important, we would, we would want you to be drawn to what the Bible says about.

This very important topic of identity. Ryan, I can’t remember exactly where the idea of this topic and this book came from. I know it was in a, a team meeting that we were having at least 18 months ago, maybe even further back. I just know that in my own experience, the idea, the topic of identity just floats all over our culture in many ways.

And I thought this is on a lot of people’s minds. I’m not sure there’s a lot of clarity, particularly biblical clarity about this topic. And that’s kind of what intrigued me. What about you? What drew you to this idea and to wanting to be a part of this project? 

[00:02:08] Dr. Ryan Denison: It’s kind of the same thing where I think we were sitting, like you said, we were sitting in a meeting and talking about projects that were of interest to us, things that got it better on our hearts.

And I think both of us just really kind of latched onto this idea of identity. ’cause so much of the work that we do just on a day-to-day basis with interacting with the culture and the news is so much of it is centered around people trying to find identity and things other than God and all the problems that creates.

To where I think for a large part, at, at least for me, it was, this is an issue I’d been, I’d been thinking through and trying to understand because it seems so pervasive and it explains so many of the other issues in our culture. And being able to kind of dive deep into that and figure out not only it’s easy to recognize where the problems are, it’s harder to recognize what the solution is.

And so getting the chance to really dive into scripture and see what the Bible says about identity and how that relates to all this was really kind of what motivated the project for me. 

[00:03:05] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And, and as I, as we’re getting ready to have this conversation, I was just wondering how many people have even a really fundamental, clear sense of what the word identity means in this case.

How would you give them a working definition? Maybe we can start there. 

[00:03:22] Dr. Ryan Denison: I think that at the core of it, it’s just how you see yourself. But within that idea is. I think it’s more related to the sources of where you derive that understanding and for much of the culture with where the Bible’s not for those who don’t make the Bible, that foundation.

And honestly, I say for the culture, this is true for a lot of Christians too. And I know it’s something that I’ve struggled with at times is. To find my identity in something other than my relationship with God. And so I think that’s kind of, but when it comes to just what we mean by identity, that’s, for me at least, that’s the core definition is just how do you understand who you are?

So how would you answer that question? 

[00:04:01] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, that, that’s kind of my idea as well. That kind of what we call a sense of self. And there are in my experience, you know, there’s a lot of pieces to it, right? I, I kind of go back in my mind when, when this, this word and this conversation comes up, I come back to my own very first sense of identity as being.

The, the son of my parents, you know, I was the son in the, in my case, the, the seventh child or the seventh member of my parents’ family. I was Tommy and Carolyn’s. Child. And I think that’s a pretty natural way of where all people may begin their sense of self and their their framing of identity is who am I?

Who are my parents? What’s my last name? And then pretty soon after that, other things like I’m from this particular place and you know, I, I may be known for a hobby or a particular skill, but I have a very real sense. My dad was very well known in the town I grew up in. My mom as well. They never lived in any other town.

They were born and raised their whole lives and lived their whole lives in this same town. And. There, there was just a sense of that’s where my identity started was through my family and through my parents and just being named in that way. And of course the Bible says a lot about names and the significance of names and all of that, but that I.

That sense of who I am and where I came from, those start to build the first kind of building blocks of a sense of self. And that’s really a little bit about how we wanted to lay out this book. There’s kind of a part one, part two of this book that we’ll walk you through in our conversation today as you listen.

But we really are kind of. Trying to frame up two big questions around identity and a, and a sense of self and self understanding. The first one is, is just what, what does God say about identity in the Bible? Now obviously we can’t cover everything. We want you to know that what we’ve worked on here is not exhaustive.

There’ll be volumes and volumes of things written on identity, and even volumes and volumes of written, of things written on what the Bible says about identity. But we tried to pull out some very fundamental parts. And talk about those as a place of starting. And then Ryan, a lot of your work was on part two.

What’s the second part of the book about? 

[00:06:20] Dr. Ryan Denison: The second part is just kind of taking that foundation that you established in the first part about what the Bible says our identity is, and then looking at all the ways that we’re tempted to try and find it in something else. Because I, I think what makes what makes this issue so tricky sometimes is that the way God designed us to find our identity in him.

Can be easily misconstrued, but we also, even if you reject God, you can’t reject the way he created you. And so in a lot of ways, there’s certain aspects of how we’re meant to find our identity in God that when we choose to find it in someone else, we’re still looking for those same things. And that creates all sorts of issues in terms of.

Taking kind of some of the, I I called it in the book immutable characteristics, but kind of those foundational things of who you are and kind of trying to make those, the pill, the foundation when really they’re meant to be more walls on that building. And just things of that nature where whether it’s needs or insecurities or so many other.

Issues where we really kind of see them, they become foundational to how we understand ourselves. That motivation is largely rooted in our relationship with God and how he created us to find identity. And so that’s kind of what I wanted to do in the second part is just look at all the ways where when you reject that God based identity, how you still can’t get away from kind of how he created us to find our understanding of ourselves.

And so within that, I, I think that also kind of goes to one of the things you talked about at the first part is you make the argument that our identity is rooted in God’s identity. And I think that’s really foundational to understanding. Can you unpack that a little bit more for us? 

[00:07:57] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, I think this is really kind of fundamental to the whole conversation of the Christian view of where identity comes from.

Obviously as Christians, the foundational truth that we claim is that there is a God and that he is not only I. King and creator over all things, but that he is also personal and knowable. And we get that sense from the very first pages of the Bible where the Bible just assumes the reality of God.

It never explains, where God came from because he didn’t come from anywhere. But it just simply assumes the reality and presence of God in Genesis one, one, and then starts to unfold a picture first, not of human beings, but of God himself and I. Of his, not only his presence, but his creative power.

And so that really in the, in my sense, is the, the beginning, the foundation of where identity begins. It begins with who God is, not with who we are. But with the presence and the, the purposes that God had in creating the world and in creating all of us, and then very soon after that story of creation, whether you take it literally or figuratively, but soon after that, we see that God creates human beings and the Bible’s very clear that he makes them in his image, that there’s a very unique.

Aspect to the creation of man and woman, that they are not like the rest of creation. They are a part of that creation, but they are distinctive. And one of those favorite places I look to is Genesis two seven, that it says that God formed man very personally, very intimately. Out of the dust of the ground.

But then it says in Genesis two seven that he breathed in demand the breath of life. No other part of creation has that experience. He didn’t do that with the animals, he didn’t do that with anything else. And that really immediately, Ryan, to me, starts pointing us to the uniqueness. What human beings are and how we are able to relate not only to each other and to the creation, but most importantly and foundationally we’re able to relate to God.

And that that means a number of different things. It means that we have the ability to think, it means the ability to feel that we don’t live simply by instinct like the animals do. That we’re not just caught up in a a normal process like the like we would say with the plants and, and those things that come outta the ground that we are different from those.

And most distinctively we learn in these early pages of the Bible that we not only have the ability to relate and the relate the ability to love and think and feel, but we have the ability to choose. That God gives us this very significant quality of free will. And again, not living or being driven simply by an instinctive nature.

And so out of that introduction that we find in those first couple of chapters of the Bible, we’re finding out a lot about there is a God and what is he like, and that he is actually personal and accessible and knowable. But that, that relates and directs directly feeds into the identity that we have as people who can relate to him in a true relationship that we get to choose and that he’s given us the freedom to choose.

And that’s, that’s my basic starting point when it comes to a framing of my own identity and the identity of all human beings. I don’t know how you would do that. Without an understanding of the revelation of God and the identity of God, that’s first seen in those chapters, but then unfolds in increasing ways all the way across the story of the Bible.

[00:11:55] Dr. Ryan Denison: A hundred percent. And I, it’s so helpful, I think to remember that. I mean, we do, the Bible starts with that ideal of who we were created to be. Mm-hmm. So that before it gets into sin, before it gets into all, all the ways that things went wrong, it establishes, it kind of wants a, it’s, it’s as if God wants us to remember.

It’s look, I know you’re aware of your sin. I know you’re aware of all the ways that the world around you is not what it’s supposed to be. And I love that God starts the story of. Humanity, the story of our relationship with him by going back to that ideal, because I do think there’s something in us that no matter how much sin corrupts, no matter how much sin kind of tries to hide it, there’s something in us that kind of remembers the.

That we are created special, that members, we are created unique. So our members were created for something more than just getting through life. And I think you see different philosophies, different thoughts pop up from time to time that try and find alternatives to that. And so many of them end up in some form of nihilism that’s just.

This life doesn’t matter because apart from God, you can’t really find anything to replace what God says we’re created to have. Yeah. But that doesn’t stop us from trying. And yeah, I do think that kind of gets into kind of one of the things you talk about is kind of, the impact of sin and all this, and I I love that in the book you used the word trespass and kind of unpack what that kind of, that understanding of sin.

Can you talk a bit more about kind of why you chose trespasses, sort of the way to understand that? 

[00:13:20] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, so would love to unpack that. But let, let me back up to something you said just a minute ago, which is you know, I’ve heard theologians and writers at times talk about Genesis, the first two chapters before we get to the, what I call the catastrophe of sin and trespass that happens in man’s rebellion that we see in the Garden of Eden.

I gotta tell you, Ryan, my. My wish. Sometimes when I’m reading Genesis one and two, the original story, I’ve heard theologians call that like the original blueprint, right? That this is the way God intended it and, and in his heart of hearts wanted it to stay forever, but he knew that there was this enormous risk of.

Free will and that there could not be what we understand to be love unless there’s free will. And so that’s the opportunity, or if you want to call it the risk that God took in creating us in his own image. Because relationship and love particularly have to, has to be a characterized by free will.

I don’t know about you, Ryan, but I wish there was a lot more information in those first two chapters. Because if this is the original blueprint and the way things were intended to be from the get go, I. We know that the whole Bible right, is, it’s a very big story and a very big book, but even still, it’s very much thousands of years compressed into of a relatively small book.

When you think of it in terms of the magnitude of the story of what it’s trying to convey, and particularly in those first two chapters, I’m like. Okay. I need a lot more detail before, before I get into this, this big long story that starts the story of sin and redemption. That is the primary conversation of the Bible, obviously.

But I just wanted to confess that right off of, you know what I, I love that the foundation of identity and the ideals that God had are. In their core nature found in those first two chapters, the telling and the retelling of the story. But I really wish there was a lot more that I knew than what I do know.

But to your point, yeah. Yeah. We, we get to chapter three and we start with this beautiful creation and the first family, Adam and Eve. And their their initial relationship to God, their initial relationship to each other. We find the first marriage there. In the latter part of chapter two, we start seeing their management and stewardship over all of the creation, these beautiful lines that they were walking with God and the coolness of the garden just.

IIC kind of picture. And then we see this tragic story of temptation and of choice and of rebellion that finds its way into the story of all humanity and our relationship with God in the, in what is commonly referred to as the fall and the rebellion of man. The Bible does use a lot of different words to describe that rebellion.

It uses the idea of debt. Kind of frames it in a financial or economic kind of way. But it, it’s this word trespass that you find in various places throughout the Bible that is the one that kind of draws me in the most. And it has the idea of, of crossing a line or going over a boundary. That you knew you were not supposed to, to invade.

And we use that terminology even when we get angry with somebody and we say, you crossed a line with me. We’re using this same concept, the same idea of trespass. And that’s really in many vivid ways what happens in the Garden of of Eden when Adam and Eve know that there are boundaries. There’s not a lot of boundaries, which is kind of amazing in and of itself, but there is this boundary.

Hey, there is this one tree that you’re not supposed to eat from, and that is the boundary that requires them to make a choice of trust and a choice of faith. And we know that tragically they choose to buy into the devil’s lie and deception rather than to trust God about this whole opportunity.

And it is the crossing of that line. In an attempt to become as the devil tempted them to be equal with God, that ultimately creates this cataclysmic rebellion and fall away from a perfect relationship with God. That’s the rest of the story of the Bible. Everything that takes place after that is about God’s love and power working to restore us back into that right relationship with him, ultimately through his son Jesus coming and all that.

We understand in the story of Easter to make it possible for our identity really to be reclaimed, but it, it has to be a recognition of what we started with. In that idyllic environment and then what went wrong and that we are all complicit in this original sin of Adam and Eve, this trespass of crossing the boundary instead of trusting God.

And that, you know, part of what I say in my part of the book is that we have to be willing to listen to and to confront the bad news that God is going to say. About our identity and about our relationship. And if we don’t, if we don’t come to terms with the, the hard things that God has to say about us in terms of people who have trespassed, people who have sinned, people who are indebted to him, if we don’t come to a reconciliation with that in terms of what God reveals, then we’re always going to be struggling with our identity.

We’re always going to be going down the wrong path. And trying to construct an identity that ultimately will leave us with a sense of lacking and a sense of what I would say in the worst sense, a sense of desperation. I. 

[00:19:26] Dr. Ryan Denison: Definitely. And so much of it does go back to that original sin of just the way I, the way I’ve kind of come to understand it is just, it’s the desire to get God’s blessings on our terms.

And I think that’s so much of what Satan was trying to, was. Offering There was, and what, why it was so tempting and why it’s so tempting for all of us today, still when Satan offers the same temptation, is it’s this idea of yes, you, you understand what God created you like the blessings you feel entitled to as people.

Mm-hmm. Because there things God intended to give us, it’s just he didn’t intend apart from him, there’s something about. Learning, being aware of your reliance on God, that reinforces you’re not good enough to get this on your own. And I think there’s, we wanna reject that. Mm-hmm. And I, I do think kind of what you talked about there and kind of hinted at is just the collective nature of that.

How that’s a problem that humanity shares. And I think that’s kind of a difficult concept, especially in America for us to wrap our heads around because so much of our culture is individualistic in the sense of, I create my own path, I create. Like I create my own identity, which is a huge reason. This is a struggle in our culture today, but there really, I, I feel like there is something you miss when you ignore or minimize that collective part of it.

Can you speak a bit more to kind of, what, what you lose out on when you kind of minimize that collective aspect of sin and collective aspect of identity? 

[00:20:50] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, I think this is one of the hardest things for us to wrap our minds around and our understanding around when, when building our identity. I, I love that question of, you know, are we even capable of, of creating our own identity?

We’ll get to that a little bit later. The big, that’s a pretty big, daunting thing when you start unpacking it. But this idea of being collectively a part of all humanity. There are times when we like claim that very proudly you know, in our constitution, all men are created equal and endowed by their creator.

With these certain inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we sometimes we kind of touch on it and tap into it and claim it even in a very bold way. But most of our lies. As Americans and people of the West we have this mentality of pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps and being very rugged, individualist what some even call hyper individualists.

And there is certainly a truth in that, that you’ll find in the Bible that we are each. Responsible agents personally before God, and that when you get later on into the story of God’s redemption and salvation, this call. For an individual to respond to the revelation and grace of God in Christ, that that we don’t ride anybody else’s faith into a relationship with God by grace, that we have our own personal relationship with God.

And that’s absolutely true. So there is a very real individualistic nature to faith. It’s not just that. And you’ll see this as many people have encouraged me, go in other parts of the world, other cultures, Asian culture culture within society south of the equator, and you find people who live in a much more collective communal mindset.

They have a greater and deeper awareness that their life, their identity, and their choices. Do not just simply affect them and the direction and Traje trajectory of their life, but it affects everybody around them, particularly their families, their friends, and their local community. And in some cases, if they think it through far enough, they’re like, it affects everybody in the world.

And that is a very real reality within the Bible as well, and I think it’s fundamental to our understanding of faith, particularly our understanding of identity as being connected to this brokenness that is called Sin and Rebellion. And the way I try to talk about it is that if we can’t see ourselves as being the descendants.

Adam and Eve, then we’re going to miss out on the ability to be united spiritually in the work of Christ. And so there’s kind of a negative and a positive aspect to this communal identity of being, simply being human beings. And I’ve, I’ve literally Ryan pondered this for years. That. That we have to come to the place.

I think what the Bible is telling us about our identity, and particularly about our broken identity as sinners, is that if any one of us had been in the garden as Adam and Eve were, we would have made this same choice. And if we don’t embrace that truth, then we are separating ourselves, number one from the revelation of the Bible.

And we’re ultimately setting ourselves up as not being able to participate in the spiritual union that the Bible talks about in the New Testament with Christ. And there’s big, big theological arguments about this. Some of the early church fathers like Augustine talked about the significance of this, that it’s not just that we imitate.

Some of the rebellion and some of the rebellious ways of Adam and Eve, but we actually participate in that original sin of Adam and Eve. And again, various parts of the Christian family will talk differently about this idea of a original sin and the nature of sin. But I love Augustine’s idea quoted in the book that it is, it is far beyond just simply imitating.

Over and over again, kind of the choices and the trespass and the going over a boundary that Adam and Eve did. It’s actually that we were a part of it, that we are participating in it. Some people may remember that when Mel Gibson made the passion of the Christ there’s the story that in the filming of that movie about the, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, that he put himself into only one scene, and that is when Jesus was being nailed to the cross.

He wanted his own hands to be holding down Jim Kale’s hand as he played Christ. And holding the spike and holding the hammer. Mel Gibson put his own hands in there as a way of communicating. I understand that I participated in sin and I participated in the crucifixion of Christ as a part of my sin.

And that we are all connected to that. We are all a part of that and we really have a hard time with that because we are hyper individualistic Americans who think that we determine almost everything about our own lives. And we do determine a lot, but we don’t determine it all. 

[00:26:26] Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah, and, and I think part of that goes back to just, especially in an evangelical context, so much of what we preach and teach is the idea that God is calling you to have a personal relationship with him.

And so it’s easy to think if the grace is personal, the sin should be too. And I, I think that kind of goes back to a lot of that idea where it’s he and I, I love also that you talk about sin. In addition to sins, because I think one of the things that the Bible really reinforces but is easy for us to miss is that when Jesus came, he didn’t come only to pay for everything you’ve done wrong.

He came to fix what was wrong with you. Hmm. And I think that kind of speaks to that more collective nature of sin, where it is something that’s genuinely just broken with us within us, a sin nature that we couldn’t fix on our own. And so Jesus had to come and do that. And that’s foundational to who we are as well.

And if we can’t understand and accept that part of our identity, then we’re not gonna be able to fully appreciate or accept the. Parts of what Jesus is trying to create in us new 

[00:27:28] Dr. Mark Turman: yeah. And that’s that, and that’s, you know, that’s, that’s such profound good news when you really think about it. Like you said, that it’s not just, you know, the catalog of sins that every person has, but it’s actually that God came to change and to remove and to transform the Bible uses this word transform several times that he actually came to change our heart and our character within us.

Into a new and redeemed identity. And, and that it’s not just, you know, like I said, the catalog and the, the list of however many thousands or millions of sins that any one of us might commit. Both in our hearts and in our minds, and actually in our actions, I. He actually came to change the character and I think it’s in the prophecy of Elijah a couple other places as well.

But I I love the way the Bible says that I will, God says I will write my law on their heart, and even to the point at one point he says that ultimately nobody will have to teach us. What it means to love God and love others well, because it will be written on our hearts. And that’s that transformative power of God that changes the very depth and core of who our, who we are and gives us this.

Eternal identity that is just, it’s just mind boggling. And it’s, and like I said, these are big, big, some of these are big ideas that you, and I know from our educational experiences, there’s just libraries upon libraries about these kinds of ideas. And but they are things that we can grasp. If, if they’re in the Bible, then God intends for us to be able to.

To put our hearts around them and our minds around them in some way, and to use them as a way of understanding the identity that he has given us and that he restores in us through Christ. 

[00:29:19] Dr. Ryan Denison: So a hundred percent. And I think so much of why it’s, there are volumes and volumes on this is that there’s just so many ways we can get it wrong when the truth is pretty simple, if you can just accept it.

But there’s something in us. I think that and a lot of it might go back to that more individualistic aspect where we are. We’re prone to reject kind of this idea that we can’t understand ourselves apart from God because it means accepting, there’s something deficient within us that we can’t fix. And that’s just hard to do.

But the Bible is abundantly clear that it’s also true, and I think that’s kind of what, why it makes it so hard is just it. This is one of those points like I, I, for a long time I. It took me a while to realize the fact that on some level I kind of resented God for my salvation because every I had come to accept the idea that I couldn’t save myself, but I was never really okay with it.

And so I kept trying to kind of prove to God I was worth it or try and erase part of that debt. That I had to him through my own actions or through my own living. And eventually he just kind of brought me to the point it’s look, you’re trying to do all these things. I’m not asking you to do them.

I just need you to accept the free gift of salvation I’m giving you, and accept that it’s there because I love you. And let that be the foundation of our relationship going forward. And it made such a big difference. Like I, I would love to say I’m over that now. There’s still part of me that wants that struggles and wants to reject that idea that I can’t be good enough on my own.

And I think that’s just kind of, I think everyone’s a little different in that regard. For me, that’s one of my main hurdles with God is that’s one of the temptations I have to be aware of because mm-hmm. It’s just, it threatens my identity in Christ and it threatens my ability to accept that identity because at the end of the day, we really are called to find that in God and.

In relationship with him. But why do you think, like what are the reasons you think we might often struggle with accepting that part of who got created us to be? 

[00:31:12] Dr. Mark Turman: It, it really goes to the core struggle I think, that we have as sinners, which is we want to be God. And we know, I know as your dad writes about on a regular basis that we, at our, at our core nature and our fundamental sin is that we, we want to replace God rather than to trust him.

That very much rises within us a a sense of arrogance and pride. Pride in the negative sense of the word and that we fundamentally have to come to a place of humility. We have to come to a place of what I would call spiritual exhaustion. You see it in the very familiar story of the prodigal son.

You see it in a lot of other stories within the Bible. We have to come to that place where we realize. We are not God and we are never going to be God. And that requires in us a, a, a choice that can either become one of continued rebellion and bitterness. Where as a friend of mine says, if you go down that road, you’re just gonna end up being bitter, angry, and alone.

Not only for this life, but for the next eternity as well. Or you’re gonna come to a place of humility and you’re going to come to a place of. Opening your heart to the very first aspects of, of faith that trust in a God outside of yourself. And that’s, that’s. To me, the crux to faith, that’s the crux of the decision that we have to make.

Are we going to trust that God is real and that God really is the sovereign, all powerful being that the Bible reveals him to be? Or is there no such thing at all and everything is just ultimately, as you said, nihilistic and. Or are we actually in control? And you hear it oftentimes, you’ll hear it in our politics, you’ll hear it in, in other different ways.

One of the politicians of the last couple of decades, you know, famously said, there’s nothing wrong with America that the things that are right about America can’t fix. And we kind of have a personal version of that, right? There’s nothing wrong with my life that a smarter, faster, better whatever version of me could, could straighten out on my own.

That’s, I think, really core to where most of us live, at least at the beginning until the weaknesses of our self-created identities and the realities of. A big, harsh world start to convince us, you know, we are really not all that we thought we were at least not yet. And and on our own, we’re not likely to get there.

And, and so again, it just kind of comes back to the confrontation of realizing and understanding what it really means to be a created being in the image of God rather than being God himself. 

[00:34:05] Dr. Ryan Denison: Definitely my pastor Chris Leg has been on the podcast before. The way he likes to put it is have you met you?

Whenever we think about kind of just problems with humanity where it’s, it’s like we all have our issues and I think part of what makes it so tough and why this is gonna always be a struggle is that it the more, the closer you walk with God and the more you start to kind of conform to his character, the less.

Examples, ideally you should get for your own, of reminders of your own fallenness. Hmm. And so it’s, I think one of the reasons we’re never gonna get this a hundred percent right, the side of heaven is that well, like the closer you walk with God, the more examples you give yourself of doing this right to where it can be easy to kind of forget the fact that.

The reason you’re doing this right is because the Holy Spirit in you is equipping you to do that, is giving you the, just the strength to endure through those temptations and come out on the other side. And I think it’s almost, there is something in us that even the victories God gives us is easy to look at the role we part, the part we played in it.

’cause we do have a role. It’s not like God is like trying to make us robots or that even God isn’t proud of us when we do well. I think scripture is abundantly clear that he is a loving father who when we follow his will, he delights in that and he’s proud of us when we do. It’s easier to turn that inward and it’s almost the more we get it right, the hard, the easier it gets to eventually get it wrong, which I, I think is part of why that we even Christians struggle with identity so much is because every day has to go back to this idea that we can’t be who God created us to be without our dependence on him.

[00:35:38] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Let me, let me kind of jump ahead and ask you just about that, because this is one of those things, so many aspects of, of life and the life of faith, particularly where we, we kind of take the approach, Ryan, that it’s, it’s okay, this is a this is a, a thing that God is gonna give you and it’s gonna come in some kind of a spiritual box.

And once you have it, you have it. And that’s all there is to it. Talk about you, you, you were alluding to there in, in some of your comments, that that our sense of identity is, is, is very significantly fluid and developing. I don’t know if I would like the word evolving in this conversation, but it’s definitely evolving.

But talk about that a little bit more in that, that this biblical picture of growing in faith. Moving toward what we typically recall or refer to as spiritual maturity. Talk about that in the framework of identity, that identity is not something. Okay. I kind of wanted to ask you this at the beginning and I didn’t, which is why, why is there so much talk about identity?

You would think after the number of, of centuries that human beings have been on the planet that we would kind of have this down, right? Yeah. But most people really struggle with it and many Christians even if they’ve been Christians for a long time, they struggle with it. Talk about the kind of the fluid growth developing nature of how identity works.

[00:37:08] Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah, I, I think a lot of it goes back to the basic foundation, like what you talked about at the beginning where we were created in God’s image and we, through sin, kind of lost a bit of that understanding, or at least we rejected that understanding to an extent. We wanted to hold onto the idea that we’re created special, that created in God’s image, but we wanted to do it on.

Do it on our own terms. And I think one of the ways that you see this evolving over the years is just every time we start to get it better, Satan comes up with a new way to temp us to get it wrong again. And I think that’s kind of why every culture has its own. Even today, like you were talking about, when you go to different, when you go to different parts of the world, there are different threats to a biblical identity.

And so much of it is just based on the world we live in, the life, the stage of life we’re in, even where so much of it, like especially one of the reasons it’s important to get this right and it’s important to get it right as soon as possible, is that the more years that go by where we’ve kind of built a false identity or we’ve built a false foundation, the more God has to tear down to get back to where we’re supposed to be.

And that’s an uncomfortable process. Usually that’s kind of where discipline comes in. That’s I think a lot of times why we have to hit rock bottom before we’re really willing to engage in it is just, I think there’s something in us that recognizes this isn’t gonna be fun. It’s gonna be worth it, but it’s not gonna be fun.

And ev sin. That’s just the nature of sin. The farther you go down that path, the longer you have to go to get back to the right to where God wants us to be. And so much of who God created us to be is based on this ideal that this side of heaven we’re never gonna fully attain. But I don’t think God expects us to either.

He, he expects us to try and he expects us to hold Jesus as a standard rather than other people. And we’re measuring how close we are. At the same time, there’s also a recognition. I mean, that sin will always be part of our lives even after we have the Holy Spirit. And that just means that we’re gonna have more opportunities to go back to God and seek his forgiveness, to seek his guidance.

And just more reminders, I think for and more chances for God to redeem that by helping us remember not only who we’re created to be, but the ways in which we’re likely to reject that understanding. 

[00:39:23] Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah, it takes me, takes me back also to that idea that just while, while we are all connected within humanity, and you know, this question of who am I is really fundamental to every human being.

Because it’s just a part of what it means for any and every person to be human. But it also comes back to that reality that God does relate to us, not only as all human beings, but he relates to us individually. And that every person that’s born, whoever who, whatever child is being born at this very moment, is going to face these same questions that, that we’re talking about today, and they’re gonna have their own journey with God in, in working out this idea of what does it mean to be a human being?

And who am I? What, what is my identity and how do I fit into this, this big world? And so that kind of really comes back to the compliment that God deals with us in that kind of personal and intimate way as individuals. And that’s the reason why people like you and I need to continue to, to try to create resources and to share what we understand out of the Bible and out of our journey with the Holy Spirit.

About what God does consistently say about the identity that he has given us and wants to redeem in us. And that’s a beautiful thing because, you know, the astounding thing is no matter how many people God allows to be created and born, every one of them is totally unique. And while there are aspects of.

Very deep and profound shared identity among all human beings. There’s also very distinctive and profound aspects of every individual. And, and watching God unpack that, you know, you keep wondering how many people does God really want in heaven for all of eternity? It’s a really big number and just the astounding creativeness of God that he can create all of these different.

People, all of these different cultures, you see these beautiful pictures in the book of Revelation. Every tribe, tongue, and nation. And God is enormously. Diverse in what he can create. But while we’re all connected in many ways as human beings, we’re all also very distinct as individuals out of his heart, out of his mind.

And that just the, the, it’s just astounding when you hear Paul. The book of Acts 17 of passage, we talk about all the time where Paul says to all of these philosophers and thinkers in the city of Athens, Hey, from one couple, from one man, Adam and Eve. God brought every single other human being. So we’re all connected that way, but we’re all unique.

It just is astounding. 

[00:42:15] Dr. Ryan Denison: It is, and so much of it speaks to just, I think at, at the beginning you talked about how you, towards the beginning of our conversation, you talked about how you wish that you knew a bit that. Genesis one and two went into a bit more detail about all this stuff and I, I kind of just thinking back on that, I’m curious if may if maybe the reason why God doesn’t give us more detail is that on this issue he understood that simple is best.

The fewer things we have to keep in mind, the less room there is for us to get it wrong. And the fact that we’ve still gotten it so wrong so often. Despite how clear he is, I think is probably testament to the fact that we don’t need, we need to, it’s more we need to get the information we have right before we’re probably ready for much more.

And I think a lot of it goes back to what you’re talking about, like with just how individual, like how unique he created every one of us to be. That just means there’s more opportunities for each of us to get it wrong in our own unique ways, but also other opportunities for us to get it right in those ways.

And I do think there’s a collective nature to it as well, where. Part of the reason that God wants us to get our identity right is so that we can help others do the same. And I think that’s one of the points you make in the book is just how kind of our relationship with God isn’t really complete unless we’re helping others to establish their relationship as well.

And just I was curious if you could talk, if you could explain a bit more about kind of that connection. As well. 

[00:43:41] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it’s just, it, it’s one of those things that we easily get wrong, but can also discover amazing things about us. And, and as we talk about and the part that we’re gonna get to in a moment that, that you wrote about, where the world offers us different pathways and alternatives, it just, it points to the reality.

And even what we’ve just been talking about is that, this is, can be really difficult. The spiritual life is fabulous. A relationship with God through Christ and faith is awesome. It’s an incredible adventure, but there’s a lot of challenges to it as well. That, you know, we, we are trying to know and relate to this transcendent God.

And some of us stumble because we’re too materialistic, we’re too quote unquote, scientific in our perspective. You know, we have a lot of people in our culture that think if you can’t prove it by the scientific method, then it’s probably not real. When there’s a lot of things like love, just simply our basic understanding of love that are real.

Sometimes life seems so random that we wonder how any of it makes. Any kind of cohesive sense. But it is in. Confronting and engaging our spiritual life, but also doing that collectively with others in healthy relationships that I think so much of our identity starts to frame itself. Like I said at the beginning, that sense of a child, I.

Having a sense of identity of I belong to this mother and to this father and I belong with these siblings, if they have siblings and I belong in this larger community of extended family. We start seeing in some ways that the people around us, even from our earliest days, are kind of like mirrors in my opinion.

And it is, it is in their faces that we start. To form up the very foundational ideas of what our identity is. And I think that’s just the way God intended it to be. But very soon, it’s not very long into our lives before a lot of other voices and influences come into our experience. We begin to begin to move outside of our extended families into more and more relationships.

But it is in those relationships. Where we start to understand other aspects of our identity, and it’s also that we are becoming those mirrors to the people around us. They are taking identity cues, if you will, from us, from the decisions that we make from the, from the stories that we tell, from the lessons that we share, both positive and negative.

We, we, we are all constantly learning. And we are all hopefully in the best of ways, lifelong learners, and we do that particularly with each other. I mean, that’s, that’s why I love having these conversations with you and with others on, on our podcast. That’s why I like the platform of podcasting is because so much of my own spiritual development and my own sense of identity has come.

Through just really good conversations, just being in conversations with other human beings. Sometimes just eavesdropping on other conversations where other people are talking. That becomes that communal aspect of building my own story, my own sense of self. Comes in that interaction with other human beings, being around them, being directly involved, being a listener in the periphery.

All of those ways are ways that I think God has designed the experience of being a human being to form up those sense, that sense of identity. Now, there that’s why it has a real importance about who you spend time with, who becomes. The people that you have the deepest relationship with, it’s also why, you know, if we, we, we all come from broken families, but those aspects of our broken family can lead us to, to skewed understandings of our identity.

And that’s why God in some ways gave us this thing called the church. Again, not perfect. A people hopefully on an adventure and a pilgrimage with God. And as we are all being formed into Christ, that, that then we’re helping each other along that journey. It’s not just an individualistic thing between us and God, us and the Holy Spirit.

It’s us, the Holy Spirit and each other and all of that. God is working to frame up and form a healthy identity in Christ. 

[00:48:11] Dr. Ryan Denison: And I think Paul speaks to that a bit as well. When he talks about the body of Christ and how that’s a key part of our identity as well, is that we are, I mean, Paul talks about how kind of acknowledges that we’re gonna be tempted to look at other people’s giftings and other people’s identities and wish that we could be like them in some ways.

And he speaks to how God created each of us uniquely, but. Unique for the purpose of kind of augmenting and amplifying the gifts he’s given other people so that we can work together to serve the kingdom. We can work together to help other people know Jesus. We can work together to accomplish God’s will.

And I think it built into that is this idea that if you’re truly accepting your identity in Christ, it’s gonna mean not only do. Are there certain things that you can’t do as well as others? It’s gonna mean that there’s certain things you can do better than others. Yeah. I think especially, it’s so easy to look around and see all the things we wish we had, but.

Kind of minimize or forget the gifts that we do have, the gifts that God has given us. And those are a key part of our identity as well. And I think that that’s built into that kind of collective body of Christ idea, is that when we fully accept who God created us to be, it means that we embrace the good and the bad.

But that means that, and not even so much, the bad is just we embrace the fact that we need other people. And that’s hard for. Also built into that is the idea that we have things that, that we can give that other people can’t, and we have a role we can play that is unique to us and that we’re called to do that.

[00:49:46] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it, it, you know, in its worst sense it becomes comparison and competition, right? Mm-hmm. And that Paul talks about that to the Corinthian church and other places as well. But if, if properly understood, it becomes very much, freeing of, Hey, I don’t have to know or do everything. Yeah. And you know, we start to get past our savior mentality and start realizing you know what?

I am valuable and I do have a part to play. I. It’s not all about me and it’s not all on me. Which might be a good segue to the other half of the book, which is your area of, of contribution here which is the alternatives that the, that the world tries to give us. When it comes to the formation of our identity, and like I said call out things in this book, you know, not just a few years ago, the word identity was the word of the year, according to dictionary.com. ’cause so many people were using it.