Known by Who Redeemed You | Galatians 2:15-21 & Colossians 3:1-4 | Our Identity in Christ

Where do you actually find your identity? This message, "Known by Who Redeemed You," turns to Galatians 2:15–21 and Colossians 3:1–4 to answer that question the way Scripture does: not in what you build, earn, or accomplish, but in what Christ has already done for you. The apostle Paul's own words, "I have been crucified with Christ," show that self-justification always falls short, and that a right standing before God comes only through faith in Jesus. From there, Paul points to a new and lasting identity: hidden with Christ in God, secure and unseen for now, but certain to be revealed in glory when Christ appears. This sermon calls us to let that truth reshape how we live each day, dying daily to self and resting in the righteousness that is already ours in Christ.

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Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week we dig into God's Word, trusting that the Holy Spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us.

When I was younger, there was something that my parents and grandparents did that confused me. That is, that the one part of the paper that they made sure to read every day was the obituaries. This not only confuses you as a younger person, but I also thought it was a little bit morbid. Now, you know, the cliché joke about why people do this is that they want to make sure they're not in there, right? But as I was thinking about this, with the decline of printed newspapers and the advent of social media, this habit of past generations has likely declined. Now we learn of the death of people that we used to know from a text from an old friend or a post in a Facebook group that someone made for your high school. Now, while we don't grab our coffee and open to that page first in the newspaper right away anymore, the obituary itself has not gone by the wayside. They are still distributed and read at a funeral. And often the link to the online version is shared via a text from a friend, or it's distributed in the places where the people that you know come together online.

We read them with interest.

We wonder what details of their life are going to make this short summary of their life. And I'm guessing most of you are probably like me. You read them with interest, whether online, in a newspaper, or on the folder at the visitation or funeral. And you're interested in them, but in the back of your mind you wonder, what is somebody going to write about me?

How will my life story read as it's told in just a few short paragraphs?

It's a sobering thought. And, in fact, I've heard of people assigning it as an exercise for people to assess what really matters in their life as they consider what they want their legacy to be. What do they want to be known for, for how their life was lived with the years the Lord blessed them with? But today I want to push the question further than how Am I remembered? I want us to ask, whose account of us is actually the true one?

What is our identity?

Paul in Galatians 2 gives us sort of an obituary for himself, doesn't he, when he says, I have been crucified with Christ.

Amen. We see that Paul finds his identity in what his Savior has done for him.

Now, back a while back between Christmas and New Year's, we had that one Lord's Day between Christmas and New Year, and I didn't want to start our series on James on that Sunday where traditionally attendance is low. So, I decided to address the identity crisis that is going on in our culture regarding what it means to be human in an age of social media and artificial intelligence. And my emphasis then was on our being made in the image of God and the call that we had to be living sacrifices for the glory of God. Well, last week we came to the end of our time in 1 John, and here we are with one Lord's Day between the end of a Going through a book of the Bible, a holiday before we start again. And so it's another opportunity to do what I would refer to as a one-off sermon outside of a series. Next week we start on the regulative principle of principle of worship for 4 weeks. I didn't want to start that before we start Sunday school, so I considered what do we do? Well, my mind went back to the response that I received regarding that identity sermon.

Back around the time of Christmas. It was really on people's minds. What is our identity in this modern world? And so, I thought it would be good today to once again consider our identities. How do we live as living sacrifices who are made in the image of God? We know our identity.

Amen.

We know who we are. How do we live into it? So, as we start out today, we are going to take a look at the words of the Apostle Paul in Galatians chapter 2. So, as we come to these words, a really quick contextual reminder is necessary. Like so many of the books of the New Testament, Galatians was written to address error, and the specific issue at hand is that there is a group known as Judaizers, and they insist that when Gentiles come to faith in Jesus, they need to be circumcised according to the Old Testament law. As you can imagine, this was not very popular with Gentile men. Well, Paul counters this by clearly spelling out the sufficiency of the work of Jesus. Christians are made right before God on account of grace and not by works. And so the Gentiles coming to faith in Jesus, they don't need to mix their belief in Jesus with following the rituals of the old covenant in order to be saved. Jesus is enough. And when Paul says here that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ, His point is that keeping the commands of the old covenant system isn't going to cause you to be declared righteous before God.

That's what the word justified means here.

It's a legal term.

It's a declaration that you are righteous in the sight of God.

You are declared righteous.

And that identity doesn't come to you because you earn it.

You don't become righteous before God because you're in church a certain amount of Sundays every year.

You aren't filling up your righteousness meter in hopes that you will get to heaven by taking the Lord's Supper a particular number of times each year either.

The only way to be declared righteous is through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And the reason for this is clear. Being born dead in trespasses and sins, I'm incapable of meriting righteousness on my own. Our sin is rebellion against a holy God, and it separates us from him. And the chasm between us and God is far too wide for me to cross it on my own by anything that I do or would do. It doesn't come by being really careful in keeping the moral law. By being generous or through religious activity. And even if I was able to bridge that chasm, that gap between God and I, even if I could do that by my works, when I would start doing that, I would be doing it in order to get myself towards God. I wouldn't be loving my neighbor for the sake of loving my neighbor. I would be loving my neighbor to be selfish so I could Merit salvation for myself. I would be negating the very good works that I was doing in trying to cross that chasm and reach God on my own. A declaration of righteousness only comes by being united to Christ because he was perfectly righteous for you and he bore the wrath of God that you deserve for sin.

That's the only way to be righteous. That's the only way to stand before a holy God And that's why Paul boldly says, by works of the law no one will be justified, no one will be declared righteous. And so, you can see why this is central to the identity of the children of God. Our identity is not rooted in the things that we have done or will do. Who we are is rooted in the fact that we are declared righteous On account of Christ. We can build a persona around the things that we do, but none of those things should be central to our identity. Now, our human nature is unbelievably prone to trying to justify ourselves. We like to believe that our law-keeping, our hard work, our moral performance, or even our career makes us worthy.

Amen.

But none of those things, even if they are good, justifies us. The Judaizers in Paul's day were hinging things on circumcision, but we still have the same root impulse today. We will always try to do something to earn merit before God.

Against this impulse, we must take Paul's words to heart.

Once again, by works of the law no one will be justified. So, if none of that earns you a righteous standing before God, where does that leave the identity, the self we've spent our whole lives building? Paul doesn't just tell us that that project isn't enough.

He tells us that it needs to die. Look at what Paul says just a few verses later.

This isn't an obituary written by someone else after the fact.

This is essentially Paul writing his own.

Notice, his point isn't that he was crucified and as a result his old self is improved. Being crucified wasn't a way that he was optimized. Being crucified with Christ isn't a way he received an update. He says that his old self was put to death.

It was crucified with Christ.

And verse 19 tells us that through the law, he died to the law so that he might live to God. Essentially, what Paul is saying here is that the law is what made him aware that he was dead to sin or dead in sin. The law can only accuse. It cannot bring life. It's not that the law is therefore bad.

The law is good.

The law is holy. But in our fallen state, there's no way that we can keep it perfectly. And so when we sin, we are being continually reminded of our inability.

Amen.

Still, we think we can use it to climb the ladder to God. Paul says that he died to the law so that he might live to God. This is a result of what God has done in Christ. Paul is able to live to God and is no longer under the jurisdiction of the law. It can't accuse him anymore. He is free from the curse of sin. In Christ, we are finally able to live to God. We do good works because we know that God is already pleased with us because we have been united to Christ. This is the result of us having been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. That is the believer's core identity.

Amen.

It changes how we live. We live by faith in the Son of God. We live each day resting on the grace that He has blessed us with. The world encourages us to build an identity, to shape ourselves around things that build status in this temporary world.

But the call to us as God's people Is to put that to death and live to God.

Honestly, let's be brutally honest about

Want to catch up on past messages or explore more of what we've been learning together? You can find the full sermon archive at edgertonfrc.org/sermons.