What Does Your Identity Inspire?
— by J.D. Greear
Identity is one of our favorite topics, partly because it is so beautiful to think about the kindness and goodness of God to bestow identity on us, and partly because our identity has a tremendous influence on our motivations and practices. This week, JD Greear dives into the connection between the amazing reality of our identity as children of God and how that identity inspires us to love our neighbors through our vocations.
The Gospel says that acceptance is a gift that is given to you. It's something you receive. It's not something you work toward. It's a gift you receive and work from. Right before Jesus went into the temptation, the trial of 40 days in the wilderness where he would fast and pray and resist Satan, right before that, God declares to him in his baptism “you are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” It was the strength of that identity that gave him the ability to withstand Satan. In fact, what you'll notice is that when Satan comes to attack Jesus, the first thing he says to him in each of the temptations is “if you are the son of God…” He's trying to get him to doubt this declaration that God has made over him because he knows that would weaken his ability to stand up under temptation in the same way.
What God wants to do is he wants you to build your identity in the fact that you are a beloved child of God because God has given you a gift in the gospel and made you his son or daughter. And when you embrace that, that it's not by works, not by proving yourself, it's by grace, then you're going to be able to have confidence in your in your business ventures because you're not trying to prove yourself. You're going to be working from acceptance and not toward acceptance. And that's going to free you to experience a new motivation in your work. And that motivation is love. When your identity is settled in Christ, you can begin to do your work out of love for other people as a benefit to them.
We want to pick up a core theme that we discussed in our first session, and that is to show how we are supposed to use our vocations, particularly as entrepreneurs, as a way of loving our neighbors, not proving ourselves, but loving them. Good work and great businesses are two of the best ways that you can love your neighbor.
We function in many ways as the very hands of God, we function in our work as answers to the prayers that other people were praying there. Martin Luther, famous German theologian and reformer, he described it this way: When somebody prays the Lord's Prayer—which God commands us to do—what do they ask God? They ask God to give us this day our daily bread. And God answers that, right? He does give us our daily bread. And how does he do it? We don't just make it magically appear on our tables. He does it by means of the farmer who planted and harvested the grain. He does it by means of the baker who made the flour into bread. He does it by means of the person who prepared our meal. Right? All these things are ways that God answers this prayer to give me this day my daily bread. Listen, not for profits are not the only or even the primary businesses that love and bless our neighbors. Not non-profits, are great., alright? But every good business, especially, I would say profit-making businesses serve that function also because good profit-making business increases wealth, it decreases poverty, and it blesses people's lives by the products that it produces.
So you have to ask, who am I trying to love?
The bottom line? Business is not just about feeding yourself for your family or making a fortune. Good business done with ethical integrity and excellence and quality is itself an act of love for our neighbor.
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"Are you a rich young ruler?" is a question every faith-driven leader must honestly assess if they are to lead an organization with faithful integrity in alignment with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities (what I will call business a better way).