Identity: I'm in Christ, therefore I am.

“What if I told you there was a place you could go where you could be anyone you wanted to be? For example, let’s say you could have biceps that popped and abs that rippled. Or for the ladies perhaps the dress size you’ve always dreamed about wearing and hair that is always just right. Want to be single again? Want to forget you have four kids all under the age of seven? Want to be prosperous? How about young? Popular? Engaging? Aloof? Promiscuous? Rude? Adventuresome? Violent? And if this or that characteristic or experience does not work out for you, no problem, change it. In fact, we can get really bizarre. Ever wish you had wings and could fly? How about a tail? Want to commandeer a giraffe? Attend a dance club without gravity? Become a priest in your own church? Would you like to try out being a ghost? In this place, you can be anyone you want to be.

“This digital phenomena is called Second Life. It is one of several virtual realities that you can join via the Internet where you and tens of thousands of others simultaneously wander around and “do” life. Listen to some of the descriptions of Lindenworld (where your Second Life takes place) that can be found on the website: ‘Second Life is about personal expression and your avatar is the most personal expression of all. After all, an avatar is your persona in the virtual world…Despite offering almost infinite possibilities, the tool to personalize your avatar is very simple to use and allows you to change anything you like, from the tip of your nose to the tint of your skin. Don't worry if it's not perfect at first, you can change your look at any time.’

“Think this is just another overly popular first person 3-D game? You may want to think again. Second Life has a real economy. In fact, the “people” in Lindenworld support an economy that is spending at the rate of $130 million dollars a year and is growing in the double digit range each month. That’s not fake or virtual money, that’s real dollars. What are they spending it on? Virtual cars, virtual sunglasses, virtual property, virtual cover charges…in fact, you can even visit a “real” ATM in Second Life and trade your “paper dollars” for Linden dollars. If you made a few bucks in Lindenworld selling a virtual pet that you custom designed for a paying customer, you can cash that back out into paper dollars and go by some real dog food for a hungry Fido.

“On October 23, at the time of writing this particular part of this manuscript $590,000 real dollars had been spent in Second Life in the past 24 hours; 12,754 players were logged in (out of 1.1 million who hold a membership), and Pontiac had just bought a whole virtual island to promote their virtual product and will begin selling virtual cars that can be tested on a virtual track and bought, presumably, with not so virtual dollars. Reuters, the well respected news agency, opened a news bureau inside of Second Life this week. It is staffed by one full-time reporter. Consider these last few quotes from the website and intro video: 'Second Life provides near unlimited freedom to its Residents. This world really is whatever you make it, and your experience is what you want out of it. If you want to hang out with your friends in a garden or nightclub, you can. If you want to go shopping or fight dragons, you can. If you want to start a business, create a game or build a skyscraper you can. It’s up to you. Life beyond reality…a land of infinite opportunity…an everchanging world rich with promise…transform your being, tempt fate without inhibition, court danger without fear, indulge every passion, from Linden Lab…Second Life…get one!’

“Now the point of this long description is not to lay a foundation for a rant against Second Life, virtual worlds, the Internet, computers, technology, or even to exalt the ‘olden days.’ The point of describing Second Life is to help us to begin to get our arms around contemporary trends in societal answers to the question, ‘Who am I?’ Or in other words, I am wanting to move us toward thinking about the issue of identity.

“At first glance, it would seem that identity, like so many other ideas in our culture has been “commodified,” conveniently packaged for mass consumption by us, the often gullible consumers. Think about some of the major trends in what is being sold these days and see if they don’t reflect Second Life’s approach to identity. Customization… Flexibility… Availability… Transformation.

“In some ways, identity can simply be thought of as fulfilling a defined role and the more we adopt and own a certain role, the more identified we become with it. For example, when we teach children about firemen, they come to understand not that firemen arrest burglars, but that they put out fires. When we teach them about what it means to be an astronaut, they come to understand not that astronauts build houses, but that they navigate through space. Slowly but surely the child should learn that who you are determines what you do, how you behave, where you go, etc. Second Life alters this equation somewhat by allowing you to “be” whomever you would like to be and therefore allowing you to “do” whatever you want to do. Your “second life” is no longer tethered to the pole of your first life…you are free!

“Or are you? While this discussion of identity is helpful in illuminating and exploring the topic, it remains up to this point at least one significant step away from how the Scriptures speak to this issue. The Bible is really much more simple and clear (and finally determinative) in the answer to the “Who am I” question. You are either: of the light or of the darkness [1 John 1]; of the Spirit or of the flesh [Galatians 5]; new creation in Christ or old man in the flesh [2 Cor 5]. Every other hat you where, every other role you associate with, is secondary to this most fundamental aspect of your identity. Given this truth, Second Life does not represent some “new, never seen before, cutting edge” way of constructing identity in our social consciousness. I would argue that it is simply a new level of freedom, available to those with a high speed connection, to be who they actually are. To put this more accurately, we are free to be ever more enslaved to the mastery of sin, which is no freedom at all. When we remove the constraints of a physical reality, the opportunities to live out our enslavement to sin are limited only by what our minds can imagine and our checkbooks can handle. It is one more venue where we live out our true identities, either in Christ as slaves to righteousness or out of Christ as slaves to sin (Romans 6).

“You see, the hard reality we all must learn is simply this, you are not whoever you want to be. Our ideas about ourselves, no matter how sophisticated and technologically advanced are often plain wrong. When an unbeliever asks the question, Who am I? The best answer to that question is that you are enemies of the cross of Christ bound for destruction and under the power of Satan. When a Christian asks the question, “Who am I?” there is also an answer. This answer is not in our self-fashioned ideas of cultural Christianity, nor is it in our family of origin, it is not in our job title or a virtual reality with an unlimited number of variables that we can control, it is not in a theoretical understanding of metaphysics, it is not in our hearts, in fact, it is not even in knowledge about this book (John 5:39). The answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ is in a person, and that person is Jesus Christ.” – Devon Berry, Pastor for Youth, Clearcreek Chapel, “Christ, The Son of God”

Vos: Our "absolute" justification is "a 'God-interesting' act in the strongest sense of the word

“... with the large place occupied in the early-Christian consciousness by the thought of the life to come, it is easy to see, that two such all-covering planes (the life to come and justification; crb) could not fail to intersect. There exists, however, sufficient evidence for the eschatological stamp borne by the idea of justification even at that controversial stage.

“...For...relativity and uncertainty Paul substituted absoluteness and certainty. And here lies precisely the point where eschatology and justification intersect. By making both the negative element of the forgiveness of sin and the positive element of bestowal of the benefits of salvation unqualified, the Apostle made the act of justification to all intents, so far as the believer is concerned, a last judgment anticipated. If the act dealt with present and past sins only, leaving the future product in uncertainty, it could not be regarded as possessing such absoluteness, and the comparison with the last judgment would break down at the decisive point.

“...The Apostle not seldom does speak of the consciousness of justification as needful for those who, within the Christian sphere, are subject to a daily sense of sin. In Rom. 5:2 he affirms that believers through Christ have received and now are in actual possession of access to the grace wherein they stand, i.e., the grace of peace through justification; cp. Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14. According to Gal. 2:20, the life which the Apostle now lives in the flesh he lives through the faith of (in) the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him. In Phil. 3:7-9, he represents it as his constant striving to be found in Christ, not having a righteousness of his own but that which is through faith in Christ.

“It is also extremely doubtful whether the forgiveness of trespasses spoken of in Eph. 1:7 and Col. 1:14 refers to sins of the pre-Christian state only. The argument, therefore, derived from scanty recourse to justification in pastoral practice does not prove that Paul excluded sins committed after conversion from the scope of the justifying pronouncement of God. To be sure, were (Paul) Wernle’s view correct and justification purely-retrospective, then the vital nexus between it and the final judgment would be broken. But in favor of the intimate connection between the future and the present, and the backward movement in thought from the former to the latter much more may be said than is directly affected by this controversy. The language of Rom. 8:33,34: “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifies; who is he that condemns” could not be more absolute than the sentence rendered in the last judgment; in fact it is so absolute as to be indifferent to the categories of present, past or future. In this respect the fact of justification is only the reverse side of the facts of prognosis and predestination and it would be out of place in the catena salutis (chain of salvation; crb) of Rom. 8:29, if its scope were less unlimited and unconditional than that of the other conceptions enumerated.”

“Justification is a...justification of life, and the “life” thus declared to be its consequent is the endless life, that of which it is promised that the saints “shall reign” in it, Rom. 5:18-21. In general the certainty of salvation so emphatically affirmed by the Apostle with regard to the Christian as such would not be possible, if the central act of the divine saving procedure bore with regard to the future an aspect of relativity. Instead of being, what it actually is, the backbone of the sureness of the religious consummation, it would become the one weak point exposing all the remainder to uncertainty, and in so far worse than void of value. Ultimately the absoluteness of the divine self-committal inhering in this one act of justifying the sinner is due to the feature of its being a “God-interesting” act in the strongest sense of the word. It is the act in which religion celebrates its triumph, and therefore the act in which the religious and the eschatological are inseparably united. But for this same reason it is in principle incapable of being an eschatological act in the exclusive sense of the word, an act incapable of anticipation. An experience which was lacking in the foretaste of the ultimate enjoyment of God would be to that extent lacking the innermost core of religion itself.” – Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology, pp. 54-58

The Scriptures are sufficient because Christ is sufficient

A scripture passage that we quote quite often at the Chapel is 2 Peter 1:3-4: "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises...” We have been given everything we need for life and godliness. We have been given Christ. And we have been given His Word. All things necessary to become a Christian, live as a Christian, and grow as a Christian are clearly presented in the Bible.

It is all too common practice to speak of the Bible as necessary for salvation, then dismiss the notion that the Bible is all that is necessary for our sanctification. Such thinking dichotomizes salvation and sanctification, when the reality is that sanctification *is* our present salvation (1 Cor. 1:18). Holiness, elsewhere, is defined as being conformed to Christ in sanctification (Eph. 5:26,27). The Word is completely sufficient for effecting our salvation and holiness because THE WORD is completely sufficient for effecting our salvation and holiness. Artificially contrived methods of behavior modification under the guise of "practical Christian living" are not only a slight on The Word and its sufficiency, but a slight on THE WORD and His sufficiency.

There’s nowhere else we can go for knowledge about Jesus that will fix our fallen human condition. It is necessary to read the Bible or have someone tell us what is in the Bible if we are going to know God personally, have our sins forgiven, and know with certainty what God wants us to do... which means it is also necessary to read the Bible if we are going to know for certainty what is or isn't acceptable behavior to God and appropriate ways of thinking abouot God. The Bible is our only source for clear and definite statements about God’s will.

There are a couple of ways that we talk about how God has let us know about Himself, His work on our behalf in Christ, and what he expects of us. “General revelation” about God’s existence, character, and moral law is given to all people, and is seen through nature, God’s historical works, and an inner sense that God has placed in everyone. Sometimes we talk about general revelation as “natural revelation” or what can be seen in nature.

“Special revelation” is God’s revelation to specific people. When we talk about “special revelation” we are talking about the Bible. The difference between “general” and “special” revelation is that “general” revelation is just that: it cannot tell us specifically about Christ and how to be saved.

Sometimes we will hear talk about general revelation being the 67th book of the Bible. That kind of talk is problematic. Does nature speak truth about God? Yes, it does. Can nature tell us about how to be saved? No. In that sense, we cannot talk about general revelation as the 67th book of the Bible. Natural revelation does not have the power to save us, even though it does have the power to condemn us...Romans 1 says there is enough knowledge about God in creation to leave us without excuse when it comes to acknowledging the Creator as Lord.

Some evangelicals don’t like the implications of the creation being able to condemn but not save. Some have suggested that those who have never heard the good news about Jesus will get a second chance to believe in Jesus. Their motivation for such a claim is that it would not be fair for God to send someone to hell without giving them the chance to “accept Jesus Christ as their Savior”. Paul answers this fairness question in Romans 9:14 when he says, “14 What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means!” The context for that verse includes Romans 10:9-17: “9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 14 But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

The Bible lays out a definite plan by which man can be saved. It is only through hearing the Word from Christ. There is no indication in Romans or anywhere else in the Bible that hearing the Word of Christ and from Christ will happen at any other time than when one is alive here on earth. When Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:2 “Now is the day of salvation” he means *now*, this current age in which we wait for the appearing of Christ, is The Day. The Day is a reference to that expected Day of Christ’s first appearing, in which Christ’s kingdom and our salvation has been inaugurated (as has the wicked's judgment: Where it is found in both the Old and New Testaments, "The Day" almost always carries with it a biblical theological sense of 'dread') .

All that to say that salvation is found only in Christ, only in His Word, and only in the time set by God for salvation. Nature cannot save. It cannot give man the necessary information about Christ that leads to salvation. But it does condemn. And man, the clay, cannot say that God is unfair. -- crb