The grace of identity

How might Christians have a more truly theological conversation about identity? We could start with Jesus.

One thing we learn from Jesus’ resurrection body, as narrated in the gospels, is that there is genuine continuity with who he was before. Jesus is still incarnate: God’s purpose is still fundamentally to be with us in Christ. Jesus is still faithful to the disciples: He’s looking for intimate, restored, and transformative relationship. He still has wounds in his hands and side. But there’s also profound discontinuity: Jesus is no longer dead or subject to death. He can walk through walls and disappear from a wayside inn; he can ascend to heaven. Everything in the New Testament assumes that Jesus’ resurrected body shapes our hope for our own resurrection. So here’s a window into our ultimate identity, one of continuity with our earthly selves but also discontinuity. Is this perhaps the definitive theological word on identity? Our true and permanent identity is something that hasn’t yet fully come about.

Jesus’ transfiguration also reveals his true identity, which lies beyond conventional recognition. That identity emerges in relationship, in this case the historic location of Jesus in relation to Moses and Elijah—the law and the prophets—and the present location of Jesus in relation to Peter, James, and John, his current companions and the future leaders of the church. The shimmering light indicates that the disciples both have and have not yet recognized who Jesus is. Likewise, we both have and have not yet recognized who we are and who others are. Indeed, we each have an ultimate identity that only God knows, that even we cannot yet apprehend. Our identity is hidden with Christ in God.