What Defines You?

"If anyone is in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation..."

2 Corinthians 5:17

Have you ever watched one of those TED talks on the internet?  If you haven’t then you should.  Google TED talks and then watch a couple of them.   I love them and I hate them.  I love them because they make me think.  I hate them for the same reason.  The one I watched this morning is the perfect example – it was about shame.   I have been wrestling with what the speaker said all day.  She was explaining the difference between guilt and shame.  “Shame,” she said, “is a focus on self.  Guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is ‘I am bad.”  Guilt is ‘I did something bad.’”  I was tracking with her up to that point.  Then she added, “Guilt – I am sorry I made a mistake.  Shame – I am sorry, I am a mistake.”  That’s what troubled me.  That’s what I have been struggling with.   “Is that what I believe, that I am a mistake?”   Is saying, “I am bad” the same thing as saying, “I am a mistake?”   I don’t think so.  But I have to admit to you that I am really wrestling with this.  Like all of you, I struggle with shame and guilt.  I worry, “If I am bad, how can I possibly love myself?”  Then I looked up on the wall of my office and saw the picture you see posted on my blog today – a picture of a baptismal font. 

That’s why I am down here today, standing by the baptismal font at Trinity.   You see, shame and guilt are all I am left with if I try to define myself by what I have done and who I am.  Baptism points us in a different direction.  In baptism God gives us faith.  Faith defines who you are and who I am by who God is and what He has done. 

Let’s look at this.  Am I a mistake?  Faith answers with a resounding “No.”  You and I are creations of God. To say, I am a mistake is to blame Him.  But God is perfect.   He doesn’t make mistakes.   You are no accident.  Neither am I.  Indeed what the Bible teaches us is that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” 

What about the fact that you and I sin daily and sin much?   Doesn’t that mean I am bad?  Well, the answer is yes  when what defines us  is what we do, and say and think.   However faith points us in a different direction.  Faith points us to who God is and what He has done. .  Faith points us to the cross and empty tomb of Jesus.   Faith reminds us that God loves us so much that He gave His own Son… that Jesus lived and died and rose again to take away our sin.  Faith points us to this place… to baptism.  Here God washed away your sins and mine.  Here God buried us with Christ and raised us with Him to live a new life.  Here God adopted you and adopted me into His own family.  Here you and I were crucified with Christ so that it is no longer you or I who live but Christ who lives in us. 

I don’t have all the answers about what is guilt and what is shame.  I know you and I would carry both as long as our lives are to be defined by us… by the things we have done and left undone.  But that’s the point of baptism.  In baptism God defines us differently.  Now our lives are to be defined by who He is and what He has done for us.  You need no longer hang your head in shame. Because of who He is and what He has done You are loved… You are forgiven… You are a child of God… You are His new creation.  In Him you have nothing to be ashamed of!