As a Christian, your identity is resurrected in the image of God. You have the seed of God in you now. But you’re also becoming something much more glorious.

The hope of Christian identity is a resurrected self. “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above…for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:1, 3). Ephesians gives an identity formation plan built off this: “Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires…put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22, 24)

Combine these two together and you get Paul’s vision of identity formation. No illustration can capture it, because your new identity is invisible and supernatural. Think of yourself as a disembodied spirit with two physical, “enfleshed” casings to choose from. One is a disease-stricken tree. It’s withering; its days are numbered. Its fruit comes out rotten, and it’s destined to shrivel. This is your corrupt, sinful self. The other casing is the body of a baby eagle. The eagle is still learning to fly, but its destiny is to reign the skies. This is your new, resurrected, Spirit-empowered self. You can slide between these two identities.

Because identity is internal and ethereal, we can perhaps best contemplate a resurrected identity by looking at what the Bible says about you’re your resurrected body will look like. In Corinthians, Paul gets into the details. He says that with your resurrected body, there is continuity, but there’s also a world of difference. Your body (and identity) now compared to your resurrected body (and identity) is like a bare kernel that will flourish into a plant.

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