Look to God and his Word. God’s grace, goodness, wisdom, glory, and power are eternal. They always have been and always will be. Look to his salvation which he has written in a book before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). If you’ve trusted in Jesus, he will never let go of you. You will always be his creation and his redeemed child.

“What, then, is time?” Augustine asks in The Confessions. “If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”

The same could be said about identity. We all intuitively understand what identity is. I have one, you have one, and every sane person who has ever lived has some sense of identity. If you lose your sense of identity, you’re losing your handle on the world itself. But what is identity? How is it something you always have with you, yet at the same time has open-endedness—a sense that you are forming it right now?

Here is the best definition I’ve come up with:

 “Identity is your sense of self that connects who you are as a product of your past with who you wish to be in the future.”

Notice how integral one’s perception of time is to identity. Identity depends on your ability to look both backward and project forward. The more deeply and thoroughly you grasp that, the stronger your sense of identity is. This is why, for example, young children and older people descending into senility have a less robust sense of identity. Their perception of time—either memory or future possibilities is not as strong. This is not at all to say they have less value or dignity as human beings created in God’s image, but this makes clear what precisely we have in mind when we talk about identity.

Identity grasps the continuity of your self as a time-bound creature with a past and future. You make sense of your past in order to live into who you wish to be in the future. As a child progresses in her comprehension of time, so she progresses in her ability to contemplate her identity. On the other side of the spectrum, the immutability (unchangingness) of God’s identity appears connected to Him standing outside of time. God created all other things within time and space and therefore they all experience some degree of mutability (consider Satan and the fallen angels).

So What?

Maybe you find these connections between grasp of time and identity interesting, or quite possibly you’re thinking, “Who cares?” I want to suggest three applications for becoming your best self on the basis of your time-bound identity.

1) Look Out into Eternity

What prevents man from living bestially? What holds people back from living merely and entirely for the pleasure of the moment?

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