Question of Identity

John 8:48

The Jews responded to Him (Jesus), “Aren’t we right in saying that You’re a Samaritan and have a demon?”

The Jewish leaders questioned Jesus’s identity. If they could disqualify Him as Jewish, His teaching would not be valid. If they could pin Him with a demon, He would most certainly be outcast, and His followers would turn away. When the Devil is truly threatened by us, He will question our identity. He will try to convince us we could never be Christians and have such a terrible background. He will tell us we can’t be hearing from God and have failure in our lives. He will twist the truth to appear as a lie and try to convince others to believe him. We must remember always that the Devil is a liar!

Jesus was most certainly Jewish on both His mother’s side and his earthly father’s side. We find His paternal heritage recorded in Matthew and His maternal heritage recorded in Luke. A Jew must be able to prove his lineage as a Jew in order to have Jewish rights, and this is exactly why Jesus’s lineage is recorded in the New Testament. There is absolutely no doubting His Jewish birth.

A Samaritan was a Jew who had intermarried with other races, as was prohibited by the law. The true Jews looked down upon them and saw them all as sinners. Samaritans still claimed their Jewish heritage and felt the racial tension and attitudes of inferiority from the Jewish religious leaders. They knew they were not accepted and rebelled against Jewish religious teachers and tradition. The Jewish leaders had absolutely no basis for calling Jesus a Samaritan other than their own evil motives of trying to disqualify Him. The accusation was strictly slanderous.

The fact that these leaders accused Jesus of having a demon proves they knew He had power. They could not deny His power of healing and the transformation He brought to people’s lives through His teaching. They had no such power and sought to discredit Him. If His power was from the Devil, true Jews would not follow Him. How ironic that the Devil accused Jesus of having a demon! He had to hide His true identity within religious circles in order to gain followers. When Jesus came on the scene and started revealing the Father, the Devil had to try to project his own identity on Christ in order to disqualify Him. The only way the Devil can gain true power among believers is to steal it through deception.

John 8:32 teaches us that we shall know the truth (Jesus), and the truth shall set us free. Jesus sets us free from the lies of the Devil and the bondage that accompanies him. In Christ, we have a new identity with a purpose for increasing God’s kingdom on earth. When we know who we are in Christ, we will truly live free from Satan’s grip with the ability to set others free, as well.

To know who we are in Christ, we must first know Him. The closer we get to Him, the more He reveals Himself to us. He has a gift for each of us to use to build His kingdom, and He has called us to use that gift.  Determine to know Christ and to use the gifts He has given you to further His kingdom on earth. To sit back and think you just can’t do something or to fear failure is to give the Devil a part of the destiny God has planned for you. You are not a Samaritan, and you do not have a demon! You belong to Jesus Christ, and His power works in you. Start using it and being who God has called you to be.

Have a blessed day!