Hello Family, I want to talk about what we would say about our own identities. In this passage we see some priests trying to force John to identify himself. John ardently denied all the titles they offered and claimed only a subservient role to Jesus.
When people want us to identify ourselves, we are then forced to reveal what we think or believe about ourselves. We have various descriptions we’ve earned, eg: accountant, programmer, even husband, or parent. they all announce things we do or things that are important to us. If suddenly life changes and we are no longer able to be what we used to be, we feel lost and wonder who we are. This is how we know we need to shift our identity.
In Matthew 11 Jesus speaks a lot about John and he says that John is in fact some of what the priests suggest. So we see John would have been correct in assuming those titles, so taking a title based on what you do isn’t the point. We are who the Lord tells us we are, we are his son or daughter. He teaches us what all that means in the course of our lives. We learn who we truly are from his Word and the more we live it out, the more we, ourselves, believe it.
Whatever occupation we have or title we have been given is ultimately not able to support our identity. If we conflate who we are with what we do, our very identity is one mistake away from being lost. That will ruin ourselves and whatever we tried to put our identity in, maybe not right away, but soon enough. If we, like John, identify with Jesus, we’ll always know who we are no matter where life takes us
Jonathan Duncan