Welcome to a break point in a daily look and an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth for the Colston Center, I'm John Stone Street.

A common talking point within evangelical circles over the past 30 years has been our identity is in

Christ. Other variations of this include statements like well that's not who you are in Christ or you need to know who you are in Christ.

Well, this idea that our identity is in Christ

does capture a fundamental truth of the faith

that's articulated throughout the New Testament.

For example, Paul wrote, it's no no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me in Galatians

220.

And of course, there's that wonderful promise.

Therefore, if anyone's in Christ, he's a new creation, the old has passed away, behold the new has come,

at 2 Corinthians 517 of course.

However, especially now this truth that our identity is in Christ needs the additional clarity of the rest of

scripture. You see at the very same time that this emphasis on identity in Christ was becoming

so common in the church, the Western world was becoming more and more

detached from all of the deep implications of creation. And in its place was the rise

of the cult of identity, a deep confusion defined above all by expressive

individualism.

At the heart of this cult is this belief that it's our autonomous inner self that is the essential

thing about us, that we are whoever we claim to be

over and against anything or anyone in the external world. In other words we get to call

the shots about everything not just about how we behave, but about who we really

...