Acts 22 :: Where's Your Identity?

Acts 22 in the Message and TNIV translations

It was okay for the Roman centurions to put a Jew in chains and beat him without charging him of any crime, but it was not okay to do the same to a Roman citizen.  If a Greek entered the temple, the Jews considered it defiled (ch. 21, v. 28).  When Paul wanted the Roman commander to listen, he spoke Greek; when he needed the Jewish mob to listen, he spoke Aramaic.  Paul himself, before he met Christ, was able to persecute Christians and have them killed without any legal consequence, but now he could not mingle with the Gentiles and encourage brotherhood between Gentiles and Jews without facing fierce resistance.  The people around him--both Jew and Gentile--viewed the world through the lens of ethnic identity.  But Paul and his fellow Christians had become citizens of Heaven with a higher allegiance.

I think it's a built-in survival instinct for us to seek identity outside ourselves, which is both right and beneficial.  The wildebeast outside the herd becomes dinner for the lions.  But you can see in the chapter how terribly wrong this instinct can go: preserving the group becomes more important than anything; all outsiders become the enemy; outsiders are less human in our eyes than our "own kind."  Because of the group I am secure.  I have power and influence in the group.  I am accepted, I am somebody.  Without it, I am none of those things.  So you better not mess with the group.  And no, we don't need any new people with new ideas coming in here and shaking things up.

Like so many things in our lives, God redeems this innate group-drive.  He makes us citizens of Heaven, with an identity that rests securely in Him.  In the Christ-group, all the upside is available without the necessity of fighting to maintain the status quo.  His group is not closed, and is not threatened by newcomers or outsiders.  It does not have to be preserved and does not need its own language or external markers to separate insiders and outsiders (although we've developed them anyway).  Jesus made the marks of his citizenship love for Him and for others.

How do we know when our identity has drifted away from the Kingdom of God to some other kingdom?  We start to view other people as adversaries.  We become preservers of the status quo.  We become arrogant.  We focus on external markers that identify us and others as "in" or "out."  For first-century Jews, they were circumcision, language, temple worship, ceremonial washing, and associating only with other Jews.  What are those things for us?