The fruit of the Spirit marks a new humanity
How our new identity in Christ frees us from today's identity idolatry
The following is an excerpt from a lecture I recently gave at a college conference in Zomba, Malawi. Africa is not insulated from the cultural forces that have led the West to abandon a biblical view of sexuality and marriage.
Rather than being the new bastion for a biblical worldview, as Africa is sometimes portrayed, it is a decade or less behind the West in the abandonment of biblical sexuality. I can confidently make this forecast, partially, due to Africa’s uncritical acceptance of Western identity idolatry, and that is what I was touching on in this section of my lecture on the fruit of the Spirit.
If we belong to a new creation and if God himself is dwelling in us, then we who have received the Spirit are fundamentally different from everyone else in the world, and our primary identity is now our eternal identity rather than any temporal identity we may now possess. Paul makes this point in Galatians 6:15, “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcison, but a new creation.” The old ethnic division between the circumcised and uncircumcised, between the Jew and the Gentile, has become irrelevant. The people of God are identified by the fact they are a new creation.
Of course, I use that word “identity” because of the way it has come to be stressed in Western culture and as a result in global culture. Now every human being has a sense of identity that is developed through their social situation. In the past, that identity emerged from the major institutions in our lives such as the family, the tribe, and the nation. A person identified themselves as a husband or a wife, as a Chewa or a Lomwe, as a farmer or a tradesman. In the past, we found our identity in our relations to other people and the roles that it was given to us to play in society and the world.
But now, we speak of “finding myself” and “being true to myself.” Today, our identity is something that we find within ourselves and must express to the world. This is why young people in particular worry about what clothes they wear and what music they listen to. These are matters of self-expression—that is of expressing my identity to the world. Of course, in the West, we have taken this way of thinking to its most utter extreme. Even if you were born male, your true identity might be female. A middle-aged man might take on the identity of a young girl because that is what he feels that he is on the inside, or a young woman might even take on the identity of a cat and pretend to be an animal to express herself. In the new moral order, I do not conform to the identity that the community has given me, but instead I expect the community to conform to my own internal understanding of my identity. This must be done even to the point of the language that we use. I may even choose what pronouns I expect people to use when referring to me. A biological male does not have to be he/him. He may choose to be she/her or they/them or zey/zem.
Of course, in Africa, we have not gone so far, but nevertheless, a Western idolatry of identity has taken root, especially in the universities. There are some who would protest at the very fact that I, a white American male, am seeking to teach a crowd of black Malawian college students. By teaching you, I am perpetuating your oppression, and I am seeking to force your conformity to a Christianity of whiteness. Instead, I should allow you to study on your own, and let you express for yourselves how you understand Galatians from an African perspective, which may be completely contradictory to my own perspective. Of course, someone may note that we have black speakers here too, but from the perspective of the anti-racist and decolonialist, these brothers are poor victims. They have been forced to conform to the white man’s religion in their dress, in their speech, and in their theology. They should seek to throw off their oppression and rediscover their blackness. The point being made, probably in many of your universities, is that my difference to other human beings is the most fundamental thing about me, and that I should resist any attempt at uniformity across racial or ethnic lines because that is oppression. If I conform to something that comes from outside my culture, I will never be my true self because my identity is completely bound by the circumstances of my life.
It is at this point that we see the double-mindedness of Western identity idolatry: On one hand, I can determine my own identity based on my own feelings and force my community to accept my chosen identity. On the other hand, I am given at birth an identity that I cannot determine or escape and must do nothing to force my own views on others. While, in the West, I could say that I identify as a woman, I cannot say that I identify as black. In fact, I cannot even escape the guilt of my whiteness.
Thankfully, the Spirit in Galatians saves us from all these ridiculous traps. First, the Spirit frees us from the confines of our identity based on this present evil age. Paul writes in 3:28–29, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” Verse 28 puts forth three pairs of identity markers. The first is social—Jew or Greek. I say this marker is social because we are not born with an understanding of our ethnicity. It is instilled in us by our community. The second is economic—slave or free. The third is biological—male and female. Paul does not mean that these markers of identity disappear the moment that we believe in Christ. Paul knew very well that he was a free, male Jew. When people believe in the gospel, men remain men. Women remain women. Jews remain Jews. Yao remain Yao.
Instead, Paul is saying that these markers of identity are relativized by a new and greater identity marker. The most important fact of my life is that I am united to Christ, that I am Abraham’s offspring, that I am an heir according to promise. First off, this is not an identity that I arrive at by “finding myself.” It is an identity that is freely given to me by God himself. Secondly, our identity in Christ is a means of unity across what would normally be divisive lines in this age. Jew and Greek are not neutral categories. There was division and oppression between the Jew and the Greek, between the slave and the free, and between male and female. But all these division are temporal. They belong to the present age. In the church, we have been unified from every possible group identity into an eternal identity—“in Christ.”
We are no longer slaves to the normal order of things in this present evil age. We are most fundamentally children of Abraham by faith and thus children of God. It’s funny to have to say this, but I think it is necessary in today’s climate. There is not a Black Spirit and a White Spirit, even though in Chichewa we say, “Mzimu Woyera,” there is only the Holy Spirit, and thus it is the same Holy Spirit who dwells in black people that also dwells in white people. According to Galatians, no matter what your family tree says or your genetic code says, if you share the faith of Abraham, you are a child of Abraham. If you share the freedom of Sarah, you are a free child of the promise, born according to the Spirit. Paul makes this point succinctly at the end of the letter when he wishes that peace and mercy might be “upon the Israel of God” (6:16). He does not say, “Israel.” He says “the Israel of God,” which, if we compare with Romans 9, means that Paul is speaking not of a physical nation but of the true people of God who were chosen before the foundation of the world, redeemed by the blood of Christ, born again by the Spirit of God.
While I am proud to be an American, my most fundamental identity is that I belong to the Israel of God, and while we may carry different passports on earth, we hold the same passport for the new creation, which is the indwelling of the Spirit himself. We belong to a new nation, a new humanity in which people from every tribe, language, and nation are unified. Through the second Adam, Jesus Christ, and the breathing of the breath of life, the Holy Spirit, into us, we are now recreated humans, restored reflectors of God’s image.
Perhaps, you’re thinking that I’ve forgotten my topic of the fruit of the Spirit? Let us come back to it. I wonder what you would say if I asked you, “What does it mean to be a Malawian?” I know that I would have a quick answer if you asked me, “What does it mean to be an American?” It means to be free. It means to be strong and self-determined. It means to care for the oppressed and to stand for liberty, democracy, and equality. Those are values that I learned from childhood, and of course, America has not always lived up to her values. But the values are there, and they have been correctives when we have failed. When Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and cried out that he had a dream, he appealed to our shared values as Americans, and he pricked the consciences of white Americans and moved our country closer toward what we have always wanted ourselves to be.
The fruit of the Spirit is the values of the Israel of God. It transcends any one culture and may be expressed in every culture. How a Christian loves may look differently in America than it will in Malawi or in China, but no matter how we do it, we will do it. This is who we are. This is the identity that unites us. These are the values that drive us. These are the desires that guide us. If you want to know who you are, then look at this list, and if you see yourself failing at any point, confess your sin to the Father and seek the Spirit’s guidance to become the new human, the true child of God, that you have been adopted to be. Walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.