Dale Johnson: This week on the podcast I have with me Paul Tautges, he serves as pastor of Cornerstone Community Church in Cleveland, Ohio. He has authored many books about Christian Living, Pastoral Ministry, Counseling, and Parenting including the book we’re going to talk about today: Remade: Embracing your Complete Identity in Christ [1], Anxiety; Knowing God’s Peace [2], A Small Book for the Hurting Heart [3]and the foundational book which I recommend quite a bit even still; Counseling One Another [4]. He also serves as editor for the popular Lifeline mini-book series. Paul and his wife Karen enjoy life with their 10 children and their spouses and a growing tribe of grandchildren. He blogs regularly at counselingoneanother.com [5]. Paul, welcome to the podcast! I’m looking forward to talking about your new book.
Paul Tautges: Hey, thanks so much Dale, it’s always a joy to be with you.
Dale Johnson: You know, being an author myself, it’s always a story as to how the ideas of the book are developed, and I’m curious to think about this new book, Remade, and you’re thinking about specifically identity in Christ. Tell us a little bit about how that came into being. Why did you want to write about this idea of our identity in Christ? And you know that always comes with a burden that we have. So, share a little bit about the burden that you wanted to write about in this book.
Paul Tautges: Yeah, I get that question asked quite a bit and it’s forced me to really reflect on how long these concepts have been swimming around in my head. Really, I’ve been saved 40 years this time of year now. So, 1984, the Lord rescued me out of spiritual blindness and works religion and used the Gospel of John to draw me to Himself. Then I was discipled faithfully by an older couple in the church, and I think what they did for me was what Paul envisioned in Colossians 2:6-7 that I was firmly “rooted and grounded in Christ.” And so, from my earliest days, I saw this connection between Christ and my union with Him though I didn’t really understand it, but maybe be able to say it that way, but God’s goal of remaking me into the image of Christ. So that pastoral burden has been growing over the years, Colossians 1:28 being a key verse in guiding my pastoral ministry that my desire is by the Grace of the Lord and all of my weaknesses and failures that I would be used of the Lord to help believers to mature in Christ. So, that’s kind of the pastoral burden behind the book is I want believers to become rooted and grounded in Christ and who they are in Him.
The concept of being remade into His image I think is so key, Romans 8:29, you know, that’s God’s goal for us. So, to the degree that I can come alongside believers and help them grow in understanding what does biblical sanctification look like? What is the Holy Spirit’s role? What is the Word of God’s role? What is my role? Kind of wrapping all that together into one book.
Dale Johnson: I really appreciate that because there is a lot of confusion in the world today certainly chaos in how we think about ourselves and how we think about God’s design in relationship to what we are supposed to be, who we are specifically. It’s really important that I think we nail this down, and this is a part of what you are accomplishing here. You are addressing this idea of identity, and the idea of identity in our culture is laden with meaning. It’s laden with massive amounts of meaning. People mean all sorts of things when they describe identity, they describe feelings as being really a personification of their identity. They think about themselves in all different kinds of manner and ways. I want you to talk a little bit about what you’re writing from a distinctly Christian biblical perspective on this issue of being remade in Christ and how it compares to what we see really in the secular world and how they think about identity.
Paul Tautges: Yeah, the world, through its teaching on identity, really places a burden upon the human heart, the human soul that is too much for any of us to bear. The world says our identity is self-created, whereas Scripture says it’s given to us by God. Another way to say it I guess is that the world is saying to us that our identity is achieved as opposed to received as a gift from God. Obviously, that begins in the way that God creates us as male or female but going beyond that too as believers, why do we struggle so much with our identity? Yeah, I think it’s because we’re not rooted and grounded in Christ. And so, we tend to sometimes get our identity from our suffering and become “This is my particular kind of suffering, and therefore this is who I am” or “This is my biggest sin burden. This is the biggest sin struggle in my life, and therefore, that becomes my identity.” As opposed to seeing ourselves as being united with Christ. The moment we repent and believe in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit unites us to our Savior, so His death becomes our death. His death to sin becomes our death to sin. His resurrection to new life becomes our resurrection to new life. And so, we now have the Holy Spirit of God living within us, accomplishing that purpose of remaking us into the image of Christ.
I think we need desperately as believers to understand the riches of who we are in Jesus. You know that Jesus fulfilling the law on our behalf that we receive a righteousness from Him as a gift, not a righteousness that we somehow achieve. That we are accepted in the beloved one we’re accepted by God because of our Union with Christ. The riches are just amazing, and that’s where our ministry flows out of the least. It is supposed to flow out of an understanding of myself as a new creature in Christ. God has begun this new work in me that one day He will finish. He has promised. He is finished. So, on days when I’m discouraged by my sin or discouraged by my suffering, I can go back to the reality that, wait a second, God began a new work in me and he’s going to complete it and that work is united to Christ. That then drives me to want to understand not just who I am in Christ but it wants me to understand more of, what is Christ like? How did He relate to people? How did He battle temptation in His own life? You know, what did He say about the goodness of God and God’s sovereignty over suffering and the ultimate healing that He provides for us through the cross and His resurrection.
So, I want to know Christ more because He is the one I am forever united to.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, so good because now everything becomes a means by which to accomplish that work and we see it as the kindness of the Lord in driving us in that direction. I love what you’re describing here because this is a waypoint, Paul. This is a grounding perspective for us in how we think Christianly about then everything that happens in life. And this is one of the things I think there’s a lot of confusion that’s happening in the world around us. Not just in the secular world, but even in the counseling world, there’s a lot of confusion about this being a primary aim and our specific identity being in the Lord Jesus and then how we approach every issue that we deal with seeing through that particular lens.
Now you go into much more detail describing what I just said relative to lens. You describe what you call a triple-lens through which we are to see our identity in Christ. So, I want you to briefly explain if you can, what you’re describing here with this triple lens and why it’s so important that we see through that in order to understand our identity in Christ.
Paul Tautges: Yeah, the triple-lens perspective of sanctification isn’t new with me, but I wasn’t aware of anything in written form that was for the average believer. In the biblical counseling world, we’ve heard of this three-lens paradigm, the Saint, Sinner, and Sufferer, and that’s been helpful to me personally. But I wasn’t aware of anything that’s been written for the average person in the pew, so to speak, the average believer, to understand the richness of our identity in Christ. Then, how that understanding of who we are in Christ then does impact how we view our sins, struggles, and how we view our suffering? So that’s what I’m trying to accomplish in this book. Is that just like most phones now have three lenses on the camera, one of them is bigger than the other two. And so, I think it’s essential for us to keep that the biggest lens being my new identity in Christ. This is who I am. This is how God sees me. This is the biblical lens through which God is looking at me therefore it’s how I need to be looking at myself.
I think back to when God called Moses in the book of Exodus, Moses had two questions. Who am I, and who are you? That’s what he said, “Who am I, God, that you would call me? And Who are you?” I think essentially we can boil down everything in our life to answering those two questions properly; first of all, who is God? That’s crucial to our understanding of who we are because we are created in His image. So, God is our creator and Christ becomes our redeemer. So, understanding, okay, who are you, Lord? And then, who am I in light of what you say I am? Not who I think I am. So again, God being the one to define our identity. Our identity is not achieved. Our identity is received as a gift from God. So, the big lens through which we should look at everything in our life and understand ourselves is “Who am I in Christ?” then through that lens we properly then can interpret our sin struggles and what is our role in fighting sin and what is the victory that Jesus has already accomplished for us so that I don’t then become identified in my own mind and heart by my particular sin struggles.
It’s the same thing with suffering: if I know who I am in Christ, that I’m totally secure in Christ and fully accepted by the Father in the Beloved One then I’m going to interpret my suffering differently and that’s going to help me to respond to my suffering in a humble and godly and Christ-like way. So rather than looking at suffering as being God punishing me for something, I’m instead seeing it as God’s loving discipline for me as one of his children and in His desire to conform me into the image of Christ. So that protects me from that victim mentality that all of us can fall prey to at one time or another. Scripture teaches us that in Christ. We are not victims, but we are victors, and so that helps me then to interpret my suffering properly and respond to it in a Christ-honoring way.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, so helpful and really clear, three distinct sorts of areas that you’re attacking, and I think from that we’re able to understand then very specifically that life is never devoid of meaning, life is never devoid of value. We’re never experiencing something where we’re not a moral agent before God because of the redemptive power that we see in the Lord Jesus, you know, just reading and Joel Beeke’s Systematic, this idea from sanctification and he categorizes the classic saint, sinner, sufferer, that sanctification is something that has happened to us at justification, but he distinguishes that then as we are set apart and holy as those who are saints in the sight of God our identity. Then he describes sanctification is also taught in Scripture as something that’s progressive where we are being sanctified and this is what you’re describing here in terms of the Lord ridding us of the sin that still remains in our flesh and then as we walk through suffering as a means to accomplish that work where we rely less and less on our own frailty and weakness and more and more on the strength of our settled identity in the Lord Jesus and that goes on to set really the framework of your book as you divide the book into three basic chapters talking about saints, sinners, and then suffers.
In our next episode, I want to have you back to talk about some more of the contents of the book. We’re going to talk specifically about some of those, but right now, what are some of the things that you can tell us that you hope to accomplish through these specific parts of the book that you have set up?
Paul Tautges: Yeah, in the first part, part one, which is what does it mean that we are a saint? So, what does it mean that we are called out by God, for God, to God, is learning to understand who are we in Christ so that we can then begin to practice our position in Christ. And this is really nothing more than copying the apostle’s format basically in the letters of the apostles whether it’s Paul or Peter and John does it somewhat as well, but primarily Paul and the letters that he wrote he establishes who we are in Christ before he then says this is how you should live. And so, there is this, therefore, that happens whether it’s in Ephesians 4, Colossians 3, or Romans 12, there is this time that he spends saying, this is what God has done for you in Christ, and therefore this is who you are. So, this is the foundation that we’re going to build on. So, really, the essence of the Christian life is learning to practice our position in Christ. So, to become who God says we already are.
Part two is the sinner part in which we are going to look at the victory that Jesus accomplished for us. He accomplished complete victory over sin and we are now united with Him. And so, what we want to do in part two is begin to learn what does it mean to fight sin with that understanding that we are now united with Christ and to rest in our provision that God has provided for us in Christ. Not only the victory in the power over sin but also the completeness of our forgiveness in Him and the promise that one day, we will be fully sanctified and will one day we will be glorified.
Finally, in part three, we focus on what is the good purposes of God in suffering and how God uses suffering to refine us, to sanctify us as that purifying and refining furnace that Peter talks about. It helps us to interpret suffering biblically, you know, when is suffering not my fault? When is it my fault? Regardless, how does God want to use it to conform me more into the image of Jesus Christ. And so, kind of giving a fuller picture of sanctification than maybe most of us have received throughout our Christian life.
Dale Johnson: And this is so unbelievably foundational Paul, in the way we think in biblical counseling because the framework by which we now see people starts to come to life, and what it does is you’re giving the specific dynamics that are really helpful that the biblical counseling is not like some people’s caricature like, you know, hey take a couple of these verses and then call me in the morning type mentality. It is an assessment of what is going on in the person’s life. What is their genuine identity? Is it that they’re an unbeliever?” Well, we’re going to handle them quite differently than we would a believer whose identity has been given to them settled in Christ. And then the reality of whatever they’re dealing with is it, you know, something of their own making wrestling of the flesh that they’re dealing with or things that they’re suffering with from without and the Bible is so dynamic that it gives us wisdom on how to appropriately apply it in all of those given situations. That is the stuff that counseling is made of and the framework of us growing a person in relationship to their walk with Christ in all of life to honor God and glorify him.
That’s a foundational biblical counseling principle. And this is the doctrinal sort of fleshing out of that in a practical sense in the counseling room. This is so foundational. What I want to do is continue this conversation if we can and what your book will spur on, to reset us really in how we think about counseling specifically and the beautiful truths that are so applicable in every aspect of our life and particularly as it relates to the counseling room. So, thanks, brother. Looking forward to having you back next week and talking some more through this.
Paul Tautges: Yeah. Sounds great.
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