Paul’s Focus On Identity

By Klyne R. Snodgrass

[Klyne R. Snodgrass is Paul W. Brandel Professor of New Testament Studies, North Park Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois.

This is the third article in a four-part series, “A Hermeneutics of Identity,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectureship, February 2-5, 2010, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.]

If anyone focused on identity, it was Paul. Esler correctly describes Paul as an entrepreneur of identity.[1] Similarly those in pastoral roles should see themselves as entrepreneurs of identity. Pastors seek to help people understand who God says they are and how they should live; pastors communicate identity. This is the reason a hermeneutics of identity is so important. It is a direct path to understanding who God says humans are to be.

Paul and the other New Testament letter-writers began their epistles by identifying themselves and their recipients. They took the ancient letter introduction, which designated sender and recipient, and Christianized it by emphasizing the religious identity of both. For example Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:1-2, “Paul, called an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Sosthenes the brother, to the church of God which is at Corinth, those set apart in Christ Jesus, called holy ones, with all those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, both theirs and ours” (author’s translation). The identity of everyone concerned was established from the outset. That identity was determined by God, His actions in Christ, the fact that the people were in both Corinth and Christ (an interesting pairing of geographies), and the fact that they were joined with all the others who call on the Lord.

In Paul’s letters he often discussed the matter of identity. His debates with opponents were over what constitutes the identity God seeks. His instructions on conflicts and questions in churches were largely about what identity in Christ means. Three texts are paradigmatic in dealing with identity: 1 Corinthians 15:8-10; Ephesians 5:8; and portions of Galatians 2 and 3. Each of these texts is foundational for understanding identity, and each one is surprising in what it affirms.

1 Corinthians 15:8-10

This passage about Paul’s own identity is often ignored because it comes in the middle of a discussion of the resurrection and Jesus’ resurrection appearances. After listing others to whom the risen Christ appeared, Paul listed himself last (vv. 5-8), but he knew he did not deserve even to be in the list. He could not deny his history of having persecuted God’s people, of being totally in the wrong and committing unjustifiable acts. Revelation had come to him like a sudden, abnormal birth (“one untimely born,” v. 8), an event that changed his identity. Still Paul viewed himself as “the least of the apostles,” not worthy “to be called an apostle” (v. 9), but history, as real as it is, does not get ultimate defining force.

In the words that follow Paul made the most freeing statement in all the world: “By the grace of God I am what I am” (v. 10). He could not be someone else, but he was not left by himself. The grace of God both reinstated him and redefined him. This is not a statement of arrogance or distance. Paul was not saying, “This is just who I am, so leave me alone.” He was saying in effect, “By God’s grace He has taken my regrettable history and given me life and value, and He has engaged me in His own work.” Earlier Paul pointed out that grace destroys arrogance when he asked the Corinthians, “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” (4:7). All that we are and have is a gift of grace.

Grace, however, is not easily grasped; it is more a “liturgical” word for many Christians than a word with content. Grace is not simply something God gives us; it is God giving us Himself. Grace is much broader than most Christians are aware. It is the place where Christians live (Rom. 5:2); geography is identity. And as 1 Corinthians 15:10 makes explicit, it is a power at work in us. Paul’s freeing statement on identity—“By the grace of God I am what I am”—shows that grace will not leave us as we were. Grace is a power that engages us in work and that works in and on us. Käsemann is correct in pointing out that we cannot have the gift apart from the Giver, and to be related to the Giver is to be energized by His power and grace.[2] Grace put Paul to work. Grace that does not change and energize is grace never known. If work does not result, grace has not been experienced.

Paul’s self-understanding and arrogance had been reframed. He should have been excluded because he had persecuted the church, but his life had been transformed by being united to Christ. We are never so separated from God by our past that we are precluded from being our real selves. Our histories cannot be changed, but they do not have to be lived in, and they do not deserve ultimate defining force. We are not defined by our history, even if we have done something so dastardly as to persecute Christians. Our past lives influence our present, but the impact of our past is limited. It can teach, but it cannot dictate. What has ultimate defining force for Christians is Jesus Christ, the call of God, and what God can do by His grace as He transforms and energizes a person.

Paul’s commitments and loyalties were reframed, and his relations were reoriented—his relations with God and Jesus first, then especially with Gentiles, but also with the church and other Jews. The Gentiles became important to him, and he served them. His relationship with the Law was changed. It was no longer the center of gravity for him; Christ was. Paul’s boundaries were redrawn so that even while distinctions were acknowledged, boundaries between people were obliterated—no small thing for a scrupulous Jew. His internal life had been reordered as well.

None of us can escape who we are, and we cannot be someone else. But we can say, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and this grace is not without benefit to me.” This statement is freeing, but it is also a foundation for life and it enables our identity to be a tool to be used by God’s grace. Grace is an identity-constructing force.

Ephesians 5:8

The purpose of Ephesians is debated. No specific problem is being addressed, and no purpose is obvious, a fact that renders theories of the epistle’s pseudonymity suspect, to say the least. Much of the first three chapters of Ephesians is a prayer that reminds believers of what God has accomplished in Christ and asks that believers grasp the significance of what God has done. Emphasizing identity formation, encouragement, and motivation to right living may be seen as the general purposes of the letter.[3] This letter focuses explicitly on identity and is constructed around five explicit “formerly-now” contrasts (2:1-10; 2:11-13; 2:19-22; 4:17-24; and 5:8).[4] They offer a painful but realistic assessment of life without God, and they give engaging descriptions of conversion and its effect. They contain narratives about change in geography, attitudes, values, commitments, and relations. These portrayals of life before and with Christ are designed to keep people from living like everyone around them and to call them to mirror their relationship with Christ in their daily lives.

The most striking of the contrasts, the one in 5:8, functions as a summary of much of the letter: “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light” (NIV). This obvious identity text contains words few of us would be willing to say, as Paul did, to people we had not met: “You were once darkness but now you are light in the Lord.” We might be willing to say, “You are part light and part darkness,” or “Try to be light,” but not “You are light in the Lord.” Earlier the text focused on what is proper and fitting and what is not proper and fitting for Christians (vv. 3-4). Clearly identity is in view along with what fits with a Christlike identity.

Again one’s former history is not his or her determinative history. Old characteristics have been set aside, and a new identity has been granted. Note the participationist categories. Believers are light in the Lord to the degree their identity is housed in and defined by His, in the sense of a new “geography.” Geography as identity is a truth evident more in Ephesians than anywhere.

In Ephesians 5:8 Paul blended the indicative and the imperative, as he often did in his epistles. The grace statement of identity comes first (v. 8a), but then we are called as believers to live out that identity (v. 8b). Faith is the act of living out the identity God says we have by grace. Then the imperative is a necessary component. Unless the identity is lived out, it is not real. “The fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth” (v. 9). The necessity of doing is a given. Doing emerges from an identity, and once this is understood, the faith-works dichotomy collapses. Some Christians have implied that they can act in ways totally separate from what they believe and know, which only reveals that they do not really believe what they say. Everywhere Scripture compels us to live in accord with the identity God gives us. We will work. The question is whether we will work in accord with faith or unbelief, in accord with our identity in Christ or from some other identity. The focus in 5:10, “trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord,” is on discerning what pleases Him. Christian identity is an internal mind exercise, that internal self-interpreting memory, lived out in obedience to the Lord.

At several points the issue of participationist language has emerged. Such language speaks of being in Christ or in the Lord, quite possibly the most underappropriated of all aspects of the Christian faith. Participationist language means that union with Christ creates and communicates the identity that God intends and to which we are called. Two classic texts in Galatians help develop this thought.

Galatians 2:19-20

Galatians is largely an identity document answering the questions, Who are the true children of Abraham? How does one become a child of Abraham? Outsiders, who were Judaizers, came to Galatia and said in effect, “Your identity is in question. You are not good enough. You need to have a more Jewish identity to be a Christian. You need to look more like us.” Bonnard’s summary of the situation is insightful. He argues that the Galatian believers suffered from an inferiority complex and sought in the Law a means of heightening their divine sonship to a more impressive level. But baptism is the end of such religious and social supports. In baptism each person is stripped of any particular human dignity due him or her and is reclothed with the sole dignity of Christ.[5] There is no reason for an inferiority complex, for no one is superior in Christ.

Several passages in Galatians 1-2 deserve notice for their relevance to the topic of identity. Possibly the most surprising identity statement is in 1:1 regarding Christ as distinguished from men. Paul spoke of himself as “not sent from men nor through the agency of man but through Jesus Christ and God the Father.” In 1:13-24 Paul described in quite personal terms an evaluation of his own history and its role in his identity. Verse 16 states that God “was pleased to reveal his Son in me.”[6] A revelation transformed Paul’s identity at the core of his being. Galatians 2:1-10 is filled with identity issues: the identity of the gospel, of the false brothers, of those who seem to be something, boundary markers of mission, and of commitments such as freedom and the commitment to the poor. Then 2:11-14 treats the failure to live according to one’s identity (or what one claims as an identity), which is hypocrisy. It is the attempt to present an identity one does not really have.

Galatians 2:19-20 is a classic and foundational text on identity in Christ set in one of the most tightly worded and frequently debated theological statements in Paul’s writings, verses 15-21. The issues are about identity and identity markers, especially circumcision and other aspects of Law-keeping: “We are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles” (v. 15). Verses 19-20 come close to being the paramount description of what faith in Christ means, but they also raise questions and are so profound it is difficult to take them in. Verse 19a is especially difficult. How is it that “through the Law” Paul “died to the law”? Is it because Christ became a curse for us because of the Law (3:13)? Or is it because of the Law’s cooperation in condemning us to death, as 3:22 and Romans 3:20 suggest? Or is it because of the Law’s role in actually cooperating with sin to cause death, as Romans 5:20; 7:10-13; and 8:2 suggest? The last seems most likely.

The most important reality is the focus in Galatians 2:19 on being cocrucified with Christ. This verse points to a oneness with Christ and participation with Him and in Him, which is the essential ingredient in Christianity. He died for us, but we died with Him, or His death is of no effect. When Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ” (v. 20), he used the perfect tense of the verb “crucified.” This means that we do not leave our cocrucifixion behind. We stay crucified. It is a reality that stamps our lives. The identity of a Christian is that of a crucified person. The old being is not merely renewed. Resurrection is not mentioned in this verse, but it is obviously intended in Christ’s living in us. The focus is not on our being raised so that we get our self back. He is the one who was raised and lives in us.

Paul’s words in 2:20 are difficult to grasp: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (NIV). Paul clearly was living, as is acknowledged in the words that follow: “The life which I now live in the flesh.” Christians are people who have been displaced from their own being, and if a person is not willing for this to happen, he or she cannot become a Christian. This is more than is described with language about mystical union with Christ. What can it mean to say, “I no longer live”? Is this too weird for “normal” people? No, humanity needs this disorientation from self and reorientation to God. As Volf wrote, “Paul presumes a centered self, more precisely a wrongly centered self that needs to be de-centered by being nailed to the cross. . . . the self is never without a center; it is always engaged in the production of its own center.”[7] In dying with Christ and calling Him Lord we obtain a new center for the self. An obvious conclusion is that we no longer belong to ourselves (cf. 1 Cor. 6:19; 7:23a).

This death with Christ must be taken seriously, and obviously following Him means carrying a cross, as Jesus Himself said. But death, for all its importance, is not the key; life is. Life comes through death. Christianity affirms the conviction that God raises the dead, even people who are dead in sin. What does it mean to have been crucified with Christ? Paul’s primary concern is that we have cut off relations to our former way of life, to our own possession of our lives, and we have been cut off from any relationship or obligation to the Law so that we may live to God. That is the relationship that is alive and operative now. Later in 5:24 Paul wrote that those belonging to Christ “have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Then in 6:14 Paul mentioned a double crucifixion: The world had been crucified to him and he to the world. This says that Paul’s relationship with Christ cut off any hold on his identity that these other realities had.

How can we do justice to what sounds paradoxical in 2:20? “I no longer live . . . the life which I now live in the flesh.”[8] How can we do justice to the fact that all this is God’s work but not on passive subjects? How is the human will factored in? We know that God must be at work in people and must free their wills to act, but humans have the responsibility to hear and respond to God’s initiative. They do not respond out of their goodness and power, but they do respond. These questions are among the most difficult in theology. The self is involved. Conversion is not merely something that happens to us; it is something in which we are engaged and active, even as it is the work of God. There is no way to separate God’s part from the human part; yet salvation is entirely the work of God in which we are entirely involved.

Galatians 2:19-20 is one of the few texts in Paul’s letters that speaks of Christ dwelling in a person. One of the most common ways to speak of conversion involves the language of “asking Jesus into your heart,” which is fine if people understand what that means. But two problems exist with this language. First, it is marginally biblical, especially in Paul’s writings. Only five times did Paul mention the idea of Christ being in a person,[9] but 164 times he used ἐν χριστῷ (“in Christ”) or some equivalent expression.[10] Not all these occurrences should be translated “in Christ,” since some carry other nuances, but many of them point to a solidarity, a union with Christ that exceeds what we think possible. The second problem with the language of asking Christ into one’s heart is that the dominant personality is the human and Christ is a minute player in life. The reality of life in Christ places much more focus on Christ as the environment in which we live and gives that new sense of geography reshaping identity.

But what did Paul mean when he said, “I live by faith [ἐν πίστει] of the Son of God”? How should the genitive “of the Son of God” be taken? The words are problematic for two reasons: first, the word πίστις can mean either “faith” or “faithfulness,” and second, the genitive may be objective (“faith in Christ,” as most translations take it) or subjective (“the faithfulness Christ showed in His death”).[11] The same issue occurs in 2:16, which may be a Jewish Christian formula and which is summarized by verse 20. The debate on this expression has been extensive,[12] and both sides are dogmatic, but several things are clear. Πίστις has a broad semantic range and includes loyalty, trust, fidelity, and faithfulness. Further, regardless of decisions about objective and subjective genitives, faith always involves a two-sided relationship; it involves trust in what or who has been found trustworthy. To say, “I have faith” is to say that something or someone has been found reliable and worthy of trust and loyalty. To say “I have faith in God” is not to say anything much about myself but rather to say God is a trustworthy God.[13] Faith is not a mental exercise, as many people presume; rather in Paul’s theology faith is about being attached to Jesus and this necessarily involves His faithfulness.

Most importantly faith is not faith in an absent Jesus somewhere off in heaven about whom certain things might be true. Rather faith is attachment and obedience to a very present and risen Lord. Once again, if the Bible is understood correctly, the faith-works dichotomy evaporates. We have tried to guard people so much from works-righteousness, legalism, and hypocrisy that we have forgotten loyalty and obedience. Many believers do not think they need to obey. Paul certainly had no patience with the idea that believers can do something to present themselves to God. In this context “the works of Law” (v. 16) refers primarily to markers of Judaism, namely, circumcision, Sabbath-keeping, and food laws. That will not do justice to “works of law” generally, especially in Romans 4, but in Galatians these boundary markers are the main concern. Carrying out “the works of Law” primarily meant living as a Jew according to the Law. Paul could and did extrapolate from this so that nothing we do presents us to God, but our traditional contrast between faith and works was not on his mind. Paul’s point was that believers get the identity they need from Christ, not from the Law. Following the Law does not make a person a child of Abraham.

Does this text have implications for doing, for how one lives? It is foolish even to ask the question. Doing is not discussed here, but can we imagine that Christ lives in someone, takes over that life, and that the person would do nothing?

Galatians 3:26-4:7

This passage again underscores that Christian identity is found in a far-reaching union with Christ. Comparison with other Pauline texts (Rom. 6:1-2; 13:14; 1 Cor. 7:17-24; 12:12-13; Eph. 4:22-24; and Col. 2:11-14; 3:9-11) suggests that Galatians 3:27-28 is a pre-Pauline baptismal formula. Paul could have been responsible for the origin of all these texts, but either way these texts reveal foundational thinking about baptism and the meaning of Christian faith.

Galatians 3:26-4:7 is an explicit and powerful identity passage beginning with the statement in verse 26, “You are all children of God through faith in [or through the faithfulness in] Christ Jesus” (author’s translation). The same issues of understanding faith in 2:16 and 20 reappear here. Many argue Paul does not use πίστις ἑν (which occurs in 3:26) to express faith in Christ. I would argue that there are a few such places (e.g., Eph. 1:15; Col. 1:4) and this may be one of them, but if faith is understood properly, it does not really matter. Being “baptized into Christ” (3:27) is a commentary on having faith. To have faith is to be plunged into Christ, to be taken out of oneself and into Him so much that it is as if a person puts Christ on as clothes (3:27). Christ is the believer’s environment. In 4:19 the imagery focuses instead on Christ being formed in people. Being a Christian means that we are conformed to Christ both inwardly and outwardly. Regardless of the imagery, once again the identity of the person is taken over by the identity of Christ.

The result is the most explosive sociological passage ever written. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female” (3:28). Distinctions are not set aside. Distinctions still exist but valuations do not. “You all are one in Christ Jesus” (v. 28b), but it is in Christ Jesus that people are one.[14] Christianity in its Pauline and Johannine forms is expressed with participationist language. The Christian has so close an identification with Christ that he or she is part of Him, is in Him, remains in Him, is one with Him, and is one with others who are in Him. Since they belong to Christ, they are the seed of Abraham and heirs of God’s promises. A person does not become a child of Abraham by Jewish descent or religious observance of regulations in the Law regarding separation from Gentiles. If this were the case, all Paul’s work among the Gentiles was useless. Torah regulations could never provide for unity among Christians, and even if Gentiles became proselytes by accepting circumcision and keeping the rules, they would always be second-class citizens. A person does not become a child of God by becoming a child of Abraham; instead he or she becomes a child of Abraham (a spiritual descendant of Abraham) by becoming a child of God by faith (cf. Rom. 4:1-25).

The main actor in Galatians 4:1-7 is God. God is the one who sent both His Son and the Spirit, and through whom Christians are heirs, and who reveals Himself as Abba, Father. God is engaged in the task of creating a people to live in relationship with Him. Christians are a people whom God has made His own family. There is a direct parallel with the parable of the prodigal son in that identity is given by the Father’s actions and people are instated or reinstated as sons and heirs by the Father’s actions. We are children of God only by virtue of being in His Son.

This identity of necessity changes relationships. The claim is often made that 3:28 is a soteriological statement and has nothing to do with social issues. The text supposedly speaks coram Deo, “before God,” and does not impact issues of ethnicity, slavery, and gender. Some suggest Paul meant these words only partly. But neither view can stand. A social issue—eating with Gentiles—was the problem addressed. Far from being a statement about which Paul was uncertain, this is his basic summary of what it means to be a Christian. This is verified as well by the climactic positioning of each of these statements, particularly 3:28, which is the center or climax of the letter to the Galatians. It stands as a hinge between 3:7-25 and 4:1-7, particularly since both sections focus on the change that has taken place with the coming of faith.

Paul’s point is that faith in Christ has effected a new status (children of God) and a new existence (incorporation into Christ). The image of Christians as the body of Christ is implied in the text, and the stress is on the unity that is achieved in this new existence. The words in this section have a proclamatory character, identifying what it means to be in Christ. Each of the three pairs in Galatians 3:28 encompasses all of humanity. The parallel structure in verse 26 (“you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus”) and 28b (“you are all one in Christ Jesus”) emphasizes that all have the same status as children of God and that all enjoy the unity that is in Christ.

Marked as we are by individualism, Paul’s ideas of union with Christ, of being in Christ, go against everything modern people know. People who say they are one with Jesus are more likely to be institutionalized than respected. For some people Paul’s notions of intersubjectivity are incongruent with modern ideas of identity and self, but a biblical faith insists on this intersubjectivity. Sanders, who is partly responsible for the renewed focus on participationist categories, observed that we lack a category of real participation in Christ. He said, “To an appreciable degree, what Paul concretely thought cannot be directly appropriated by Christians today.”[15] But this is the heart of the faith, and it must be appropriated. How can we do justice to oneness with Christ and His displacing us within ourselves?

A theology of baptism is at least one primary means of grasping Paul’s thought. Baptism, as this text shows, is primarily about identity. Given the significance of baptism for the writers of the New Testament, there is surprisingly little discussion of baptism in the New Testament. The text before us is one of the few addressing the issue. Paul seems to have downplayed baptism and baptized hardly anyone in Corinth, so far as he could recall (1 Cor. 1:11-17). The New Testament writers seem to have assumed that everyone knew what baptism is. There is no discussion of the origins of baptism. John suddenly came baptizing with a baptism of repentance, and the evidence for proselyte baptism in Judaism behind Christian baptism is insufficient to draw connections there. Judaism emphasized lustrations, and mikvaʾot were in use in pre-Christian Judaism. Mikvaʾot, plural of mikva, were cleansing pools with steps leading down into them, sometimes with short barriers on the steps to separate the people exiting from defilement by those entering. Mikvaʾot can be seen at various archaeological sites, including the temple precincts and Qumran. Regulations for mikvaʾot specified that the water had to be running water and sufficient to cover the body.[16]

John the Baptist may have been saying something like, “Do not go to the temple precinct to be washed in a mikva; come be washed in the Jordan signifying your repentance, repentance that the whole nation needs because God’s kingdom is at hand. Your identity is not found in the temple but in the actions of your God.” Baptism during Jesus’ ministry apparently was similar but not much of a focus; yet the risen Christ commanded His followers to make disciples, baptizing them into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). Suddenly baptism has become even more an identity-creating act. One’s “name” stands for all a person is and does; so Christians are baptized into the triune God and His purposes. In Acts 2:38 Peter told people to be baptized on the basis of the name of Jesus—on the basis of who He is and what He has done for the remission of sins.

With Paul baptismal thinking had progressed. Baptism, like the Lord’s Supper, is an incorporative, identity-changing event.

The believer is involved and not merely passive, but the work is the work of God. Paul used several passive verbs in his texts on baptism. Believers, he said, were “baptized into Christ” and “buried with Him” (Rom. 6:3-4). These divine passives point to God’s activity. Baptism is an act of God by which a person is inserted into Christ or into the body of Christ. Similar ideas appear in 1 Corinthians 12:13 (“For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit”) and Romans 6:4 with its focus on being baptized into Christ’s death, that is, “buried with Him.” We were laid in a tomb beside Christ to participate in His resurrection life. This passage is close to Galatians 2:19-20. We were plunged into the crucified One to take on His identity and conform to His life. Ideas of cleansing remain, but the most important ideas are dying and rising with Christ and putting on Christ. Galatians 3:27 emphasizes these realities. “All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ,” that is, you have put on Christ, you have been plunged into His being, His sphere of influence, and His power marked by death and resurrection. He is your identity. You are part of Him and part of the people in Him.

The body image is just under the surface of the text. Clearly there is also a high Christology assumed here. No one can say such things of someone who is merely human.

One of the most compelling images of this theology is the cross-shaped baptistries that appeared in the Mediterranean basin especially from the fourth to the sixth centuries.[17] Christians, regardless of their position on the mode and timing of the act, have not done justice to the biblical understanding of baptism reflected in these baptistries. Water does not make a person a Christian, regardless of the amount of water or the age of the person. Baptism is no magical cultic or protective act, nor is it merely a symbol of faith or grace. Baptism pictures the reality of standing in the middle of the cross to be plunged into the crucified and risen Christ so that believers take their identity from Him.[18] One is only a Christian by believing Christ, following Christ, being attached to Him, and being in Him so that one has a “Christ identity.” There is a difference between being plunged into water and being plunged into Christ. Baptism is a participatory act. As Johnson notes, baptism is “a ritual of initiation that imprints in believers a certain identity, namely, the paschal reality of the crucified and raised messiah.”[19]

Underneath this whole discussion of identity is a theory of the Atonement. Hooker suggests that “interchange” is an appropriate way to talk about the death of Christ.[20] In adopting this language she picks up an emphasis from Irenaeus, who said, “Christ became what we are in order that we may become what He is.”[21] Identity formation is the purpose of the Incarnation, the Cross, and the Resurrection.

If Paul’s participationist language is at the heart of what it is to be a Christian, why have we not spoken of faith as participatory? Such a theology could help us get past the disjunction between claims of belief and the evidence of life.

Participatory language also stresses that conversion is sociological in its outcome. We are bound with others in Christ. If Christians take this seriously, racism and sexism are eliminated. The process leading to conversion is usually sociological as well. To some degree people agree that the identity about which the gospel speaks and which they see modeled by the speaker or the speaker’s group is the identity they know they need. The implications for how a Christian community should behave, think, and present itself are enormous. With a participatory faith Christ is no longer merely something added to one’s identity.

Being a Christian means losing life to find it, not keeping it and adding on Jesus. To say Jesus is Lord is to say He has been given primary defining force in one’s life. All of us have multiple determiners of identity, as my eight factors making up identity attest.[22] While other factors are still pieces of one’s identity—some even important but some not essential—they do not have primary defining force.

Race and gender are determiners of identity, but they must be made subservient to the gospel and Jesus. Race and gender may, like histories, enable or disable, but as important as these are they do not have primary defining force. Cultural expectations concerning race, gender, and social status may need to be altered to have a Christian identity.

Culture is frequently far more determinative for many Christians than we dare admit. We speak of “culture Christians” for good reason. People confuse the mandates of their culture for the mandates of the gospel, and, according to Marty, “Evangelicals, for all the cultural bogeys, have chosen to adapt more to the mainlines of American life than most other groups.”[23]

Paul’s approach to culture is surprising. He was proud of being Jewish, but in a stunning passage describing his identification with his hearers, he wrote, “To the Jews I became as a Jew” (1 Cor. 9:20), even though he was a Jew by birth. He told Gentile believers not to live like the Gentiles (Eph 4:17). He knew how to use culture, but he also knew how to reject being used by it or being defined by it.

Possibly the most difficult arena in discussing identity is our sexual identity. Galatians 3:28 only touches on the issue. Paul did not mean distinctions between men and women do not exist, and in fact in other letters he argues for distinctions. What he rejects are evaluations based on gender. Women and men share equally in the body of Christ without differences in valuation. The church needs to resist society’s unhealthy views of gender that manipulate us. The questions about what it means to be human and what it means specifically to be a male or female are questions to which the church needs to give special attention. How should we treat sexual identity without turning people into sexual objects or acting as if sexuality really does not exist or is a negative factor?

Conclusion

Does the identity gained by being conformed to Christ’s death require action on our part? Of course it does. Galatians 5-6 gives extensive directions about faith working through love, our serving each other through love, our manifesting the fruit of the Spirit, and bearing the burdens of others (5:6, 13, 22-26; 6:2). The opposite of faith is disobedience, not unbelief. What does the believer’s identity look like? Largely it is characterized by freedom, love, humility, and productivity, with each of these words being defined by the character of Christ.

Clearly Paul was an entrepreneur of identity. A hermeneutics of identity reminds us that we have the same task.

Notes

1. Philip Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 109.
2. Ernst Käsemann makes this point in several places, including “Ministry and Community in the New Testament,” in Essays on New Testament Themes (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964), 65, 74-75; and “ ‘The Righteousness of God’ in Paul,” in New Testament Questions of Today, trans. W. J. Montague (London: SCM, 1969), 170, 174.
3. Cf. J. Paul Sampley, “Ephesians,” in The Deutero-Pauline Letters: Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1-2 Timothy, Titus, Proclamation Commentaries (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 23.
4. Also implicit contrasts are in 3:5 and 4:28.
5. Pierre Bonnard, L’epitre de saint Paul aux Galates[et] L’epitre de saint Paul aux Éphésians (Neuchatel: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1953), 77-79.
6. The New Revised Standard Version’s translation “to me” is inadequate.
7. Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 69 (italics his).
8. Of course some of the most significant statements in the Christian faith are paradoxical (e.g., “Whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” [Matt. 16:25]; and “He who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die” [John 11:25-26]; and “When I am weak, then I am strong” [2 Cor. 12:10]).
9. Romans 8:10; 2 Corinthians 13:5; Galatians 2:20; 4:19; and Ephesians 3:17. Some would add Colossians 1:27, but ejn in that verse probably should be translated “among,” that is, “among the Gentiles.”
10. Such as “in the Lord,” “in Him,” or “in whom.”
11. J. Louis Martyn takes the expression to mean the faith Jesus had and enacted, His faithful death, an authorial genitive (Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible [New York: Doubleday, 1997], 251-52).
12. See the representative articles by Richard B. Hays, “Pistis and Pauline Christology: What Is at Stake?” Society of Biblical Literature 1991 Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars, 1991), 714-29; and James D. G. Dunn, “Once More, Pistis Christou,” Society of Biblical Literature 1991 Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars, 1991), 730-44.
13. D. H. van Daalen, “Faith according to Paul,” Expository Times 87 (1975): 83-85, esp. 84.
14. I think χριστοῦ in 3:29 is a partitive genitive—“If you are part of Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants.” A possessive genitive is clearly possible, but it seems less appropriate in this context.
15. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 523. Richard Hays suggests four categories that help provide a basis for appropriating our participation with Christ: family terms, political or military solidarity with Christ, participation in an ecclesial community, and living within the Christ story, a narrative participation (“What Is ‘Real Participation in Christ’? A Dialogue with E. P. Sanders on Pauline Soteriology,” in Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities: Essays in Honor of Ed Parish Sanders, ed. Fabian E. Udoh et al. [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008], 336-51).
16. An entire tractate of the Mishnah is devoted to mikvaʾot. See m. Miqwaʾot, esp. 1:7.
17. Pictures of such baptistries can be seen at http://www.ebibleteach-er.com/im-ages/baptbyzant.jpg and http://www.ebibleteacher.com/images/bapt-mamshit.jpg.
18. Other baptistries were formed as niches in a tomb to express the same thought.
19. Luke Timothy Johnston, Reading Romans: A Literary and Theological Commentary (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 97 (italics his).
20. See Morna Hooker, “Interchange in Christ,” Journal of Theological Studies 22 (1971): 349-61; idem, “Interchange and Atonement,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 60 (1978): 462-81; idem, “Interchange and Suffering,” in Suffering and Martyrdom in the New Testament, ed. William Horbury and Brian McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 70-83; and idem, “Interchange in Christ and Ethics,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 25 (1985): 3-17.
21. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5, preface.
22. See Klyne R. Snodgrass, “An Introduction to a Hermeneutics of Identity,” Bibliotheca Sacra 168 (January–March 2011): 3-19.
23. Martin Marty, “At the Crossroads,” Christianity Today, February 2004, 39.