In the previous post we explored the reality of God’s amazing love for us. The passage that we’ve been using in our discussion on identity is Matthew 3:17. God said to Jesus in this passage, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” We have been talking about how God now views us in the same way that he sees Jesus because of the price that Jesus paid for us. After briefly looking at God’s love for us, the next element that we must explore as we consider identity is found in the last part of this passage. This last part says, “with him I am well pleased.”

The primary word in the Greek here is the word eudokeo and it means, “it seems good to one, is one’s good pleasure.” This is the idea that God is delighted in us. This may seem crazy to us as we consider how much we mess up but let’s take a familiar example to bring this idea down to size.

I love my two boys Isaac and Jonathan. They’re adorable and every time I look at them my heart melts. Anyone who is a parent can relate to this. That being said, there are times that they make me want to pull my hair out. Isaac is 2 and you’d better believe that there are times he is openly defiant towards me. Now, I’m not always pleased with his behavior but I am always pleased with him because he’s my son.

We are different from Jesus in that Jesus is and was perfect in that he never sinned. We obviously cannot say this about ourselves. Where we are the same as Jesus however, is in our identity. God now looks at us and sees his Son because of the price that Christ paid on our behalf. As a result of that price God sees us as his sons and daughters. Even though me being pleased with my boys does not capture God’s pleasure in us as his sons and daughters, I think that it’s a helpful illustration. God sees us as his kids and not just as human beings that he created. Even though God is not always pleased with our behavior, he is always pleased with us. We can always approach God with confidence in the same way that we would expect our kids to always be able to come to us regardless of what’s going on. This doesn’t mean that we should not expect him to discipline us as a good parent disciplines his kids when they are going astray. That being said, we can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is pleased with us and that he smiles when we come to him.

We’ll conclude our discussion on identity in the next post which is Part 6 of this series.