Identified With Christ and His People

  • by Jody Sledge
  • Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
  • Series: Committed To One Another: A Study Through Our Church Covenant

Having, as we trust, been brought by the grace of God to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and to give up ourselves to Him, and having been baptized upon our profession of faith, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and believing that Christ has lead us to become a part of this fellowship, we do now solemnly and joyfully covenant together.

Everyone in this world seeks after identity. It could be a youthful teenager who wears skinny jeans, listens to My Chemical Romance (they’re a band), and tries to explain to his mom a hundred times what emo means. It could be a beatnik twenty-something who reads Derrida and Nietzsche (they’re both philosophers) in a local coffee shop to impress the girl working the counter. It could be a young mother who has a child because all of her friends are having children and she wants to be able to talk about the same motherhood issues as they do. It could be an aging man who tries to mend his broken family relationships because he realizes that it is better to be old and loved by family than have any pleasure this world could offer. It could be anyone. In fact it is everyone.

It is this longing for identity that becomes our greatest need and God’s greatest gift. We were created for identity. We were created to love him, and serve him, and reflect him. We were created to be worshipers of God. And we have been recreated for identity as well. God has taken a people who were not his people and made them his (1 Peter 2:10). God has taken enemies and made them friends. God has given us an identity in Christ.

It is fitting, then, that the first paragraph of our church covenant would define our identity. Before we can accomplish those actions and attitudes we are called to, we must first understand who we are in Christ. Before we can commit to one another, we must know who exactly is covenanting together. We must first understand our identity.

We are most importantly believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. The church is not a social club, a political focus group, or a community action organization. The church is the local body of believers in Jesus Christ. We are those who have repented of our sins and disobedience towards God. We are those who have believed in and trusted in and put our faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus on our behalf. And we are those who ha ve followed the call of Christ to deny ourselves and give our whole lives to him – with all of this owed to the grace of God, which we do not deserve and could never earn. We belong to Christ.

Baptism, then, is the picture of this identity with Christ. Jesus himself was baptized. He publicly identified with wayward Israel who was in desperate need of repentance. When we were baptized into Christ, we were professing union with Christ (Romans 6:4-5) and repentance towards God (1 Peter 3:21). We were identifying ourselves with Christ. For this was the command of Christ himself, that we be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit. Our identity is in Christ and our baptism is the public display of this reality.

But Christ would have us not only identity with himself. He would have us identity with his people too. The last phrase of this introductions shows our belief that Christ leads people to become united to a local gathering of believers. He commands that we grow in love towards God and towards one another (Matthew 22:34-40). And he has provided the church to be the place where that growth is nurtured. Christ loves the church. Christ wants his people to love the church. And Christ wants his sheep committed to a local church. In fact this is the main purpose of the covenant – to unite individual sheep into a loving, caring, and Shepherd-following fold.

One final thought – the commitment of believers in Christ to one another is a solemn and joyful thing. We do not make this commitment lightly. For the commands of Christ are weighty and demand the utmost attention. Yet, this commitment is not without joy. The psalmist wrote, “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” (Psalm 133:1). There is great joy in being part of the people of Christ. For we belong to him and to one another. In what group in this world could we find more delight? What label could be more worth having? What identity could be greater than being Christ’s and belonging to his people?