288 The Name You Wear: Empire’s Label or Kingdom’s Heir?

How the World Defines You Versus Who Christ Says You Are

Jul 31, 2026

Good morning, and hello friends.

This one is going to be a little longer than usual, so if your time is short, pin it and come back later. I need to walk through this slowly because the idea pressing on my spirit this week is too big for a quick word.

It started during a recent Zoom call with my faith community. As we shared our struggles and small victories, a single theme kept echoing in every story, my own included. It was the question of identity. Specifically, what is my identity in Christ? And then, the harder, more practical question: How do I identify within the empire? How do you? The two are not the same, and the tension between them is where most of our daily spiritual warfare happens.

Our identities in the empire are handed to us, sometimes gently, sometimes forcefully. We collect titles like badges: our careers, our degrees, our roles as parent, provider, survivor, victim, success story, cautionary tale. The empire: this world system with its values and hierarchies, designs the criteria for these labels. We introduce ourselves with them. “Hi, I’m X, and I’m a [Teacher, Engineer, Addict, Convict, Failure, CEO].” Just as the empire assigns some labels that make us feel valued for a moment, it slaps on others that diminish us in the eyes of our community. The convict is condemned; the teacher is praised. But in both cases, we are accepting a definition of ourselves crafted by an empire that is passing away.

This is more than semantics. It’s a spiritual battle for the core answer to the question: Who am I?

The dictionary says identity is “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.” It’s your distinguishing character, your self-concept. But for someone walking in The Way, this definition is turned inside out. Our truest identity isn’t found in a title or a role, but in a person and a moment of surrender. Paul said it with devastating clarity: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20, ESV).

Let that sink in. My old self, with all its empire-assigned labels…the good, the bad, the proud, the ashamed…was executed at the cross. The “I” that the world knew, that I knew, is dead. The life animating this body now is His. My identity is no longer a collection of what I do or what’s been done to me. It is in whom I dwell, and who dwells in me. This is the foundational shift. Everything else is just details on the uniform of a sojourner from a different country.

This is what it means to be set apart, as I wrote recently. It’s not about being holier-than-thou; it’s about being other-than-this. The world’s current flows one way; to be in Christ is to be oriented against that current. “Do not be conformed to this world,” Paul pleads, “but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2, ESV). The renewal of the mind is the daily, minute-by-minute demolition of empire labels and the conscious reaffirmation of our citizenship in His Kingdom.

So, if my core identity is “in Christ,” what does that actually make me? Scripture doesn’t leave us wondering. It showers us with declarations:

A Saint, Set Apart: “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” (1 Corinthians 1:2, ESV). Hagios, holy, set apart. This is not a future hope but a present reality. You are a saint because you have been called out of the empire and into the Kingdom.
A Living Sacrifice: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1, ESV). Our very physicality: our work, our rest, our interactions, becomes an act of worship when offered from this new identity.
A Chosen, Royal Priesthood: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9, ESV). We are not random participants. We are selected, given royal authority and priestly access, formed into a new nation for a purpose: to declare His praises.
A Treasured Possession: “And the LORD has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession, as he has promised you, and that you are to keep all his commandments” (Deuteronomy 26:18, ESV). This Old Covenant promise to Israel is now ours through Christ. We are not God’s afterthoughts; we are His treasured possession.

This is who we are. Not a sinner trying hard to be good, but a saint who sometimes stumbles. Not an orphan fighting for significance, but a chosen son or daughter, a royal heir. The empire will spend our entire lives trying to convince us otherwise, to stick a new label on our forehead. Our fight of faith is to believe what God says about us over the screaming narrative of the world.

But know this, my focus and faith is not on the love I have for Yahuah, it’s not on the promises I’ve made to Yahuah. But, rather my faith is in the love that Yahuah has for me. May faith is in the promises that Yahuah made to me.

But here’s a question that often arises, especially for those of us who can’t trace our lineage back to Abraham’s tent: What about me? I’m a Gentile. Does this identity apply?

This is the breathtaking, planned mystery at the very heart of the Gospel. You and I, as Gentiles who have turned to Christ, are not Plan B. We are the fulfillment of a promise made millennia ago. We are grafted in.

The promise to Abraham was always universal in scope. Let’s trace it:

The Original Promise (Genesis 12:3): God tells Abraham, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” The “all“ is not incidental or casual. The blessing was never meant to be hoarded by one ethnic family.

The Means of the Promise: Faith, Not Bloodline (Genesis 15:6): How did Abraham receive this promise? “And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” The model was faith, not genealogy. This becomes the prototype for all who are justified, Jew or Gentile.

The “Offspring” is Singular (Galatians 3:16): Paul explains the key: “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ.” The ultimate heir of the promise is one person: the Messiah, Yahusha.

How Gentiles Get In (Galatians 3:26-29): “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek... for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.“
1. This is the divine logic: Faith → into Christ → become part of Christ → therefore, you are Abraham’s “offspring” (singular) in Him → therefore, you are an heir.

The early church wrestled with this. Some teachers insisted that to follow the Jewish Messiah, Gentiles first had to become Jewish, through circumcision and adherence to the Mosaic law (Acts 15:1,5). But the Jerusalem Council, guided by the Spirit, made a landmark ruling. Peter stood and testified how God gave Gentiles the Holy Spirit by faith alone, “cleansing their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:8-9). James concluded they should not burden Gentiles with the law. The core requirement was and is faith in Yahusha, evidenced by repentance and baptism.

Paul uses this beautiful horticultural metaphor in Romans 11. He describes Israel as a cultivated olive tree. Because of unbelief, some natural branches were broken off. And we, wild olive shoots, “although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree” (Romans 11:17, ESV). We don’t become natural branches; we are grafted in by faith, drawing life from the same root, the promises to Abraham, fulfilled in Christ.

The “narrow gate” Yahusha describes in Matthew 7:13-14 leads directly into this fulfilled promise. It was always the plan. The promise to Abraham was that in him “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). We are that “all.” Through faith in the singular “offspring,” who is Christ (Galatians 3:16), we become heirs. “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:29, ESV).

We enter not through the Old Covenant of law and circumcision, but through the New Covenant, sealed by Christ’s blood. This is the covenant prophesied by Jeremiah: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33, ESV). This heart-writing, this internal knowing, is for Jew and Gentile alike who come through the Messiah. It flattens every hierarchy. There is no superior bloodline, only a common heart-line to the Father through the Son.

This brings us to the most sobering, clarifying reality of our identity: the Judgment. Yahusha will return to distinguish between people. But his distinction won’t be based on empire labels; Republican or Democrat, rich or poor, educated or simple. It will be based on covenant reality. He will separate the lawless from the faithful, the goats from the sheep, those who wore the world’s name-tag from those who bore His name.

He speaks of this plainly: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21, ESV). On that day, many will point to their empire achievements: prophecy, exorcisms, miracles done in His name. And He will declare, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” (Matthew 7:23).

“I never knew you.” The Greek word for “know” here is ginōskō, an intimate, relational, covenantal knowledge. It’s the same knowledge promised in Jeremiah 31:34. It’s the heart-knowing of the New Covenant. The tragedy is these “workers” knew about Him, did things for Him (or so they thought), but they never entered the intimate, identity-transforming relationship with Him. They performed for the empire of religion, not from the identity of a beloved child.

How will He know the difference? Because He sees the law written on the heart. He examines the fruit. “Thus you will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:20). The fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, these are the outward evidences of an inward identity rooted in Christ. The works of the flesh: enmity, strife, jealousy, are the evidence of an identity still sourced in the empire of self.

This is the great sorting. It is not a sorting of titles or theological pedigrees. It is a sorting of source. Did your life flow from the wellspring of being “in Christ,” or from the cistern of your own empire-building? Were you powered by the Spirit, or propelled by the flesh? The fruit tells the tale. The narrow path, as I wrote in “The Road Less Crowded,” produces a certain kind of life, a set-apart life, often awkward in the empire, but deeply rooted in the Kingdom.

So, what does this look like for me, for us, on a random Tuesday?

It means my baseline for truth is not social or cultural consensus, which changes like the wind. My baseline is God’s unchanging Word. I study it…all of it…because it reveals the character of my Father. By knowing His character, I learn to recognize His voice and His work in the mundane moments, a theme I touched on in “The Known Destination, The Unseen Path.”

It means when the empire slaps a label on me, whether it’s a flattering title or a condemning accusation, I have a place to take it. I can look at that label and ask, “Is this who my Father says I am?” If not, it gets discarded at the foot of the cross. My identity is not “success” or “failure,” “victim” or “victor.” I am a faithful, obedient servant and image-bearer of the Creator. I am loved. I am cherished. I belong to the One who is the Alpha and the Omega.

The labels of the empire have nothing to do with that fundamental, unshakable fact.

This walk is just that, a walk. It’s the daily, sometimes hourly, choice to believe the name He has written over me instead of the one the world is shouting. It’s the narrow path, taken one obedient step at a time, often feeling out of step with everything around us. But that very feeling of dissonance is often the proof that we are hearing a different drumbeat, marching to the orders of a different King.

We are not who the empire says we are. We are who He says we are: set apart, chosen, royal, holy, treasured, loved, grafted-in, known heirs.

Walk in that truth today. Let it be the only name you wear.

So, who am I?