Identification
What is meant by Identification?
The title of this article has been chosen to express an important principle in Scripture. The principle may also be entitled Representation because it concerns the deeds of a person or persons in the past being transmitted to people who live long after the historical event. An immediate example will help. In Amos 2.10 God says to His people through the prophet, “Also I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and led you forty years through the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite”. But the people to whom Amos spoke had never been in Egypt, neither had they known the wilderness journey which took place hundreds of years before. On what basis, then, did God demand that they change their behaviour in the light of these experiences? He held them responsible because they were associated by birth with those who had been in Egypt and the wilderness actually and historically. The Jews of Amos’ day were identified with their forefathers’ experience.
Identification in Romans 5.12
Association by birth is the principle that underpins the teaching of Romans 5.12. Up to this point in the epistle Paul has explained the truth of justification and stated that God can be just and yet be the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus (Rom 3.26). That justification comes by faith, not works, and “being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5.1). In Romans 5.12 Paul turns from the question of sins to the matter of sin itself so that he can show how the finished work of the Lord Jesus, in dealing with this root problem, has enabled the righteous forgiveness of sins. He states, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned…Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous” (Rom 5.12, 18-19). These verses highlight the difference in the deeds, but the sameness of the principle, between the first and the last Adam. Both Adam and Christ are seen as the head of a family or order of man. Each is said to have committed one outstanding act, Adam’s being one of disobedience and Christ’s one of obedience. The effects of these outstanding acts are transmitted and reckoned to all who are identified by birth with these historical men. In speaking of Adam’s one historical act of disobedience in Eden, the Scripture states that all who are associated with Adam by natural birth are partakers of that one deed and inheritors of Adam’s fallen nature. This is the fundamental truth of what constitutes us sinners. Our condition as sinners is not the result of our behaviour but the result of our birth. We stand identified with the fallen head of the human race and the only thing that can break that association is death.
It is a common feature of gospel preaching that the audience is exhorted to accept their condition as sinners by considering various types of wrongdoing. The point might be better made that we are all sinners by reason of our birth and nothing but death will change that. Of course, our sins have to be acknowledged and repented of, and the resulting forgiveness frees us from the penalty of those sins. But our fundamental sinful state needs to be dealt with as well, and it is not forgiveness but death which deals with that. Thus Romans 5 goes on to teach us that, in the same way as we are sinners by association with Adam, so we are righteous by association with Christ.
How do we come into the good of that? By dying to the old order of man headed by Adam, and being born anew into the family headed by our Lord Jesus Christ. Those who are identified with Him by new birth come into all the effects of His outstanding act of obedience, and by wonderful grace they are constituted righteous.
How then do we die to Adam? In the death of Christ. When Christ died, we died - not physically, but unto the old order of man. Here is identification in the ultimate. The Lord Jesus died a literal, physical, agonising death of suffering and shame, and in so doing God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor 5.21). That death is reckoned to every believer in the Lord Jesus, and it severs once and for all the link with Adam and the fall. If the death of Christ for me saves me from the penalty of my sins and delivers me from judgment, then my death with Christ is what saves me from the power of sin and delivers me from the dominion of the Devil. Not only that, but I have been raised with Christ so that I am alive unto Him, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor 15.22). This is what Paul was referring to when he wrote to the Galatians, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal 2.20).
Identification in the book of the Acts
Keeping this principle of identification in mind will help immensely in understanding the events recorded in the early chapters of the Acts. Chapter 2 records the occasion of the birth of the Church when the disciples in the upper room were baptised in the Holy Spirit. The disciples were a company of real people in a real room in Jerusalem. They were literally baptised, immersed, in the Holy Spirit: “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting” (Acts 2.1-2). Of this occasion 1 Corinthians 12.13 says, “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body”, and reference to the original text will show that the preposition would be better translated, “For in one Spirit…”. That is, although you and I were not in that upper room, and although we live some 2000 years later, we are identified by birth with those who were actually and historically there. The moment we were saved we came into the good of all that those disciples experienced, and understanding this truth is the antidote to so-called Pentecostalism.
As we read further in Acts we find in ch. 8 that the first Samaritans were saved, but, though saved and baptised, they had not yet received the Holy Spirit. Not until Peter and John came down from Jerusalem and laid hands on them did they receive the Holy Spirit. “Ah!”, say those who teach that the reception of the Holy Spirit is something that occurs subsequent to salvation and, particularly, baptism, “doesn’t this account prove what we say?”. Not at all. God was demonstrating that the Church would include Jews, Samaritans and, later, Gentiles, but the Jews had for centuries refused all dealings with the Samaritans (Jn 4.9). Thus the first Samaritans to be saved had to submit to the laying on of Jewish hands, not to impart the Holy Spirit, but to demonstrate that these believers were all one in Christ. The Holy Spirit endorsed that on that one historic occasion. Every Samaritan saved subsequent to that event stands associated with those who were actually there, and a Samaritan saved today would immediately be indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
So, too, with the first Gentiles to be saved, in Acts 10. The bringing into the Church of Cornelius, along with those of his kinsmen and friends who were saved as Peter preached, was accompanied by their speaking with tongues (Acts 10.46). This sign was to give the Jews confidence that God was indeed including Gentiles in the Church. There is no reason for Gentiles to expect to speak with tongues as an evidence of salvation today because they stand identified with those who were actually there in Cornelius’ house.