You Are a Citizen of Another Kingdom

During the early years of my walk with Jesus, I often heard the phrase: "It is important to know who we are in Christ." That statement is true, but it speaks to only part of our identity. We must know not only who we are in Christ, but also who Christ is in us, why He has taken hold of us, and what He has called us to become and accomplish.

Paul expressed this desire in Philippians 3:12: "I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me." Christ did not take hold of us merely to rescue us from judgment or assure us of a place in heaven. He took hold of us so that His life might be revealed through us. He called us into a new identity, made us citizens of His Kingdom, and gave us a purpose within His redemptive plan.

Many believers know they have been forgiven, but they do not know who they have become. They have received a new identity in Christ, yet they continue to live according to an identity formed by their past, their failures, the opinions of others, or the accusations of the enemy. This is more than an emotional problem. It is a spiritual identity crisis within the Ecclesia.

From the Old Identity to the New

In Romans 7, Paul uses marriage to illustrate our relationship to the law. A woman is bound to her husband while he lives, but when he dies, she is released from that covenant. Paul then applies this truth to believers: "You also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God" (Romans 7:4).

Through Christ, we have been released from our former condition so that we might belong to Him. We are no longer defined by the old life ruled by sin, condemnation, and the flesh. We have been joined to Christ and made alive by His Spirit.

Yet Paul also describes the conflict he experienced. He sometimes did what he hated and failed to do what he desired. He recognized that sin was still attempting to operate within him, but he refused to accept sin as his true identity.

He cried out: "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?" His answer was immediate: "Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:24–25)

Romans 8 then announces the victory: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death. What the law could not accomplish, God accomplished through His Son. This does not mean that believers never struggle or sin. It means that sin, failure, shame, and condemnation no longer have the right to define who we are. Our true identity is now found in Christ.

Paul makes this extraordinary statement: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Our confidence before God is not based upon our own righteousness. It rests upon the righteousness of Christ. We approach the Father not as rejected strangers, frightened servants, or condemned sinners, but as sons and daughters who have been received through Christ.

What God Says About Us

The new identity must be built upon what God has declared—not upon how we feel, what others have said, or what the enemy wants us to believe. Ephesians 1 and 2 provide one of Scripture's clearest descriptions of our identity in Christ.

When a False Identity Takes Root

Every few weeks, a good friend and I would meet for coffee. Our conversations usually centered on God, life, and golf. We enjoyed playing together in charity tournaments, and he had always appeared to be a healthy, cheerful, and outgoing man.

After more than two months without seeing one another, I called him, and we arranged to meet the next day.

When he entered the restaurant, I immediately knew something was terribly wrong. His normally healthy complexion was ashen gray. I asked him what was happening.

He looked directly at me and said that he had purchased a gun and intended to end his life. He was thankful that he had an opportunity to say goodbye.

I was stunned. Nothing in the person I thought I knew had prepared me for what I was hearing.

As we talked, he told me that he had battled depression for most of his life. When he was eight years old, his father accepted a job in another state, forcing the family to move. My friend was devastated to leave his home and friends. As the family drove away, he sat in the back seat weeping. Rather than helping him process his grief, his parents told him, in effect, to stop crying and get over it.

He buried the pain, but the pain did not disappear.

As an adult, he sometimes retreated into his bedroom for weeks, leaving only to eat or use the bathroom. Yet almost no one knew. Outwardly, he appeared happy and successful. Inwardly, he had accepted an identity shaped by rejection, isolation, hopelessness, and despair.

He tried everything from faith, medication, counseling, to faith healers but God had never heard or helped him. Over the years, was convinced that he was always going to suffer from depression. That was not the identity Christ had given him. It was a false identity built over many years.

We began meeting several times each week. We prayed and studied the Scriptures concerning who he was in Christ and who Christ was in him. We asked the Holy Spirit to remove the scales from his eyes so that he could see and believe the truth. We confronted every lie that contradicted what God had spoken over his life.

The first month was extremely difficult. The warfare was intense. During the second month, however, we began to see signs of new life and victory. By the third month, he was learning to stand upon the truth and engage in the battle for himself.

That was approximately fifteen years ago. He is still walking and loving Jesus. God also restored a marriage that had been broken for over a decade and He reconciled him with his estranged son. All I can say is, "Thank You, Lord."

Later, I shared his story at a Christians in Commerce conference. Immediately afterward, a young man asked me to take a walk with him. He confessed that he was also planning to end his life. He believed he had failed his family, his business partners, the Lord, and himself. He had become convinced that everyone would be better off without him.

Once again, the enemy had built a false identity around shame, failure, and hopelessness. Although he lived halfway across the country, we began connecting regularly by telephone. Twelve years later, he continues to walk with and love Jesus. His family and business are doing well. Again, I can only say, "Thank You, Lord."

The enemy understands something many believers have failed to recognize: if he can distort our identity, he can hinder our purpose. If he can persuade believers that they are condemned, powerless, forgotten, or insignificant, he can render them ineffective in the service of the King and His Kingdom.

The Assault Upon Our Corporate Identity

What happens to individuals can also happen to the entire Ecclesia. The enemy does not merely attack our personal identity. He attacks our corporate identity as the people of God. He wants the Ecclesia to forget whose people we are, which Kingdom we represent, what authority belongs to Christ, and what mission He has entrusted to us. This brings us to the importance of understanding the time in which we are living.

Satan's Little Season

Following Christ's coming in judgment against Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, the Mosaic age came to its decisive end. Christ's Kingdom and the New Covenant order stood established, and the Gospel continued its advance among the nations.

Revelation 20 tells us that after the thousand years, Satan would be released for a "little season" and would go out to deceive the nations. This release did not restore Satan to his former position. Christ had already triumphed over him. The authority of the Kingdom had already been given to the Son and shared with His saints.

Adam's rebellion had opened the door for Satan to exercise influence through human sin and disobedience. But Jesus Christ, the last Adam, came to destroy the works of the devil, bind the strong man, reclaim the nations, and restore mankind's Kingdom purpose through a redeemed people.

Daniel saw this victory prophetically: "One like a son of man" came with the clouds of heaven and received authority, glory, and sovereign power. All nations and peoples were brought under His everlasting dominion.

Daniel then declared: "The saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever—yes, for ever and ever" (Daniel 7:18).

When Satan was released, therefore, he did not return as the rightful ruler of the world. He returned as a trespasser within a Kingdom that belongs to Christ.

Satan cannot overturn Christ's victory. He cannot remove Christ from His throne, revoke the New Covenant, or take the Kingdom away from the saints. His primary weapon is deception. His counterfeits depend upon human ignorance, fear, unbelief, and agreement.

His strategy is to convince the saints that Christ's Kingdom has not yet come, that His victory is still incomplete, and that the Ecclesia has not yet received a Kingdom mission or authority.

To accomplish this, the enemy must attack both history and identity. He must hide the evidence of what Christ has accomplished and persuade God's people to see themselves as defeated, powerless, and waiting to be rescued.

This is why identity matters.

Authority Flows from Identity

• ›If you do not know who you are, you will not understand what Christ has placed in your hands. You will not recognize what He has authorized you to do, nor will you comprehend what is possible through the power of His Spirit.
• ›If you do not know that you are a child of the King and a citizen of His Kingdom, you may live like a poor and abandoned orphan.
• ›If you do not know that you are an heir, you may live like a slave—captive to the systems of this world.
• ›If you do not know that you have been raised and seated with Christ, you may live beneath the spiritual position He has given you.
• ›If you do not know that you are part of a royal priesthood, you may remain a powerless spectator—waiting for the Lord to do what He has called and empowered His people to do.
• ›Satan cannot take away what Christ has given you, but he can deceive you into living as though you never received it.
• ›He cannot remove your sonship, but he can persuade you to live like a lost and unwanted child.
• ›He cannot take your inheritance, but he can convince you that it cannot be possessed.
• ›He cannot silence your prayers, but he can cause you to believe that they have no effect.
• ›He cannot make Christ less victorious, but he can weaken your confidence in Christ's victory.
• ›He cannot cancel your mission, but he can persuade you that the condition of the world is hopeless and that nothing you do will make a difference.
• ›He cannot strip the Ecclesia of its Kingdom identity, but he can deceive God's people into abandoning the authority, responsibility, and mission that flow from it.

The great crisis confronting the Ecclesia is not that Christ has failed to give us authority, identity, or purpose. It is that we have forgotten who we are, what He has placed in our hands, and why we are still here.

Identity Must Lead to Mission

Knowing who we are in Christ is not intended to make us proud, self-sufficient, or spiritually superior. Our identity is rooted in Christ, sustained by His grace, and expressed through humble service.

Kingdom authority is not permission to control people. It is the responsibility to represent the character, truth, justice, mercy, and righteousness of our King. To understand this identity, however, we must return to the beginning.

Humanity was created in the image and likeness of God. We were created to know Him, reflect His character, exercise faithful stewardship, and represent His rule within the earth.

Adam's rebellion did not completely erase the image of God from humanity, but it distorted and obscured it. Humanity took on an identity shaped by Adam's disobedience. Sin corrupted our desires, damaged our relationships, clouded our understanding, and brought us under the power of death.

We remained image-bearers, but we no longer reflected that image faithfully. Jesus Christ came as the perfect image of the invisible God and the last Adam. He came not merely to forgive individual acts of sin, but to deliver humanity from the identity, corruption, and death associated with the first Adam. Through His obedience, death, and resurrection, Jesus began the restoration of what had been distorted through mankind's rebellion.

The first Adam brought sin and death; the last Adam brings righteousness and life.

This restoration becomes ours through union with Christ. Paul explains: "Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life" (Romans 6:3–4).

Our old self was crucified with Christ so that we would no longer remain enslaved to sin. We are united with Him in His death and raised with Him into a new way of life.

Baptism, therefore, is far more than a religious ceremony. It speaks of immersion, union, and identification. Like a cloth immersed in dye and brought out bearing a new color, those who are immersed into Christ come under a new identity. We are identified with His death, burial, and resurrection.

We no longer draw our identity from Adam's rebellion. We receive our new identity in Jesus Christ. Yet this restoration is both an accomplished reality and an ongoing transformation. In Christ, we have already been made new, but we are also being renewed as His life and character are formed within us.

Paul writes that God has predestined us "to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Romans 8:29). He also tells us to put on the new self, "which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator" (Colossians 3:10).

The image was not destroyed; it was distorted. In Christ, it is restored.

Restored identity is not merely a change in how we see ourselves. It changes how we live and what we believe Christ can accomplish through His people.

Jesus told His disciples: "Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father" (John 14:12).

Jesus was not saying that His followers would become greater than He is. The works would be greater because, after returning to the Father, He would send the Holy Spirit and multiply His ministry through His people throughout the nations. What Jesus began to do in one geographical region through His earthly ministry would continue through His Spirit-filled Ecclesia across the earth.

This is the practical consequence of our union with Christ. His life is not only given to us; His life is expressed through us. We do not replace Christ or act independently of Him. We participate in His continuing work through the power of the Holy Spirit.

This gives deeper meaning to Jesus' command in the Great Commission: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:18–20).

To baptize people in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is more than performing a ceremony. It is to bring them into a new identity, relationship, allegiance, and way of life. They are immersed into the truth of who God is and who they were created to be in Him.

The Great Commission, therefore, is not merely about gaining converts or preparing people to leave the earth. It is about making disciples whose identity, character, relationships, and conduct increasingly reflect Jesus Christ. This is why Jesus included teaching as part of the commission. The nations were to be taught to obey everything He commanded. Restored identity must produce a transformed way of living.

We enter the spheres of society as people whose identity is being restored in Christ. We do not enter them to dominate others or impose our will. We enter as ambassadors of the King—to serve, teach, influence, build, restore, and demonstrate what life under the rule of Christ looks like. We are citizens of His Kingdom. Before we can understand our assignment within those spheres, however, we must settle the question of identity.

Who are we?

• ·We are beings created in the image of God.
• ·We are the redeemed people of God.
• ·We have died to the identity formed through Adam's rebellion.
• ·We have been raised into new life through Jesus Christ.
• ·We are being conformed to the image of God's Son.
• ·We are sons and daughters of the King.
• ·We are citizens of His Kingdom.
• ·We are members of Christ's Ecclesia.
• ·We are His workmanship, created for good works.
• ·We are ambassadors entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation.
• ·We are a royal priesthood called to proclaim His excellencies.
• ·We are salt in the earth and light in the world.
• ·We are not waiting helplessly for the King to receive His Kingdom.
• ·Our King reigns and we reign with Him.
• ·Our identity is found in Him.
• ·His image is being restored within us.
• ·Our authority comes from Him.
• ·Our mission has been given by Him.

And until all things are finally placed beneath His feet, we are called to be about our Father's business. Amen

Before we can faithfully represent Christ in the family, Ecclesia, education, marketplace, government, environment, or any other sphere, the question of identity must be settled. We must know whose we are, which Kingdom we represent, what authority stands behind us, and what mission has been entrusted to us.