Identity Theft

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. 

(John 10:10)

As more and more people are using the internet now a days, identity theft is becoming a bigger problem and have been a subject of penal legislation. Identity theft, the subtlest form of theft,  can enter into many areas of our lives. It involves any instance where a person uses someone else's identification documents or other identifiers in order to impersonate the person for whatever reason --most usually in perpetration of criminal activities, making innocent victims at fault at someone's wrong doing using the former's identity.

Identity theft is not a new crime. It is not unique in 21st century. The first form of identity theft happened in the fall of man at the  garden of Eden. Since then, Satan has been stealing our identity in Christ. Sinclair Fergusson, Pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina, explains how much have we been stolen of our identity in Christ. In his lectures on Paul In Union With Christ and Christian Living, he said:

"Paul’s favorite way of speaking about a Christian is to identify them as being “in Christ.” The expressions “in Him”, “in Christ” and “in the beloved” are used over 160 times in the New Testament. It describes our new creation and means that we are a part of a new order. We are united to Him by the Spirit through faith. For the believer (those who are “in Him”) all fullness is found in Christ and we enter into all the fullness of His resources wherein we have been given a new identity. Sadly, however, the contemporary church has spent too much time looking at the blessings of the Gospel (being “in Him”) horizontally rather than vertically, i.e. what’s in it for me temporally rather than the blessing of the spiritual family that I am now a part of. Because of that drift we struggle in finding our identity in Him…only when the foundation of being “in Christ” is true that the imperatives of the Gospel be embraced…otherwise we will kill our people."

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