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“NEWBORN IDENTITY”
Text: Galatians 4:4-7 – Christmas 1
Sunday December 28, 2025
Trinity - Creston
Grace, mercy, and peace is yours from God our Father and from our crucified and risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
Our text for this 1ST Sunday of Christmas is the Epistle Lesson from Galatians 4 that was just proclaimed.
Let Us Pray: Dearest Jesus, send your Holy Spirit to remind us that you give us our identity and establish who we are, children of God and heirs of the promise of eternal life. Amen.
Dear Fellow Redeemed in Christ:
Depending on your tastes, perhaps you’ve seen the movie from 2002 or read the even older 1980 book, The Bourne Identity. It’s a story about a man named Jason Bourne, a CIA agent who, during one of his missions, is shot, terribly wounded, and suffers a head injury.
The plot opens with Bourne unconscious, lying face down in the water. Two fishermen find him and care for him, but when he wakes up, he has amnesia and spends the rest of the story trying to figure out the answer to the question “Who am I?” The Bourne Identity is a fictional book and movie, but it confronts us with a very real question: “Who am I?”
We’ve all been asked that question; have you ever asked yourself that question? People try to answer it in so many ways—by pointing to their names, family, friends, career, talents, successes.
A difficulty is that every one of these things can be taken away from you, by amnesia or some other tragedy or even by old age. And when they are taken away, you’re left wondering, “Who am I?” “What, really, is my identity?”
It may be more tricky to answer than we thought. And in the verse that precedes our Epistle this morning, Paul makes the answer even more difficult. He tells us that we “were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world” (4:3).
That’s Paul’s complicated answer, the harsh word, the nasty reality that, unlike Jason Bourne, maybe we would like to forget—and don’t want to admit. We were enslaved.
3. Is “Enslaved to Sin” your identity?
a. Those of us who are regulars in church—not just on Christmas but also on the Sunday after Christmas—have heard this before.
(1) After all, Jesus himself says, “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin” (Jn 8:34).
(2) And Paul later in Galatians gives a nasty list of sins we may recognize ourselves doing (5:19–21).
b. Try on a few of these and see if they fit. Do these sins shackle you? Which chains do you willingly put on? Are these your identity?
(1) “Sexual immorality.” The lustful desire of physical pleasure that drives you to sexual thoughts or fantasies about someone who is not your own spouse, to porn sites and magazines, to premarital sex or an extramarital affair.
(2) “Idolatry.” The love of something or someone other than God because you believe these will give you security, support, peace, happiness, fulfillment. What do you worry about, chase after, and believe your life should be about? Family, friends, money, health, recreation, entertainment, pleasure, status, reputation, possessions?
(3) “Fits of anger.” Your deep-seated desire to control your life and the world around you, and the injustice you feel when you can’t. It drives you to yell at, scream at, belittle, and verbally abuse those whom God has given you to love.
Your child, your spouse, your friends, your church family who sit next to you in these pews and in church voters’ meetings, because you believe they don’t listen to and understand you, or because they seem to question and oppose you.
(4) “Rivalries.” Your evil heart yearns for vengeance on those you perceive have wronged you. And it drives you to hold a grudge and say, “After what you’ve said, after what you’ve done, I refuse. I’ll never forgive you.” Even though God commands you to love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, and forgive, as the Lord has forgiven you (Mt 5:44; Col 3:13).
(5) “Envy.” The deep sorrow and injustice you feel when you see others have what you want, and that drives you to whine in discontentment about your lack of spouse, job, clothes, house, health, car, food, money, or the number of people and families that we see other churches have in their pews.
c. Pick the color and length of your chains and shackles. It doesn’t matter. We all sin; we were born in sin. And Jesus says everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
(1) As The Bourne Identity goes on, Jason Bourne is sometimes sorry he’s learning his identity.
(2) Are all these sins your identity?
2. Actually, Paul is talking about an identity that is a different slavery.
a. The “elementary principles” (4:3) to which Paul refers when he calls the Galatians, or even you and me, “enslaved” aren’t slavery to sin.
b. Paul is talking about the ways that we try to free ourselves from our sin.
(1) We try to justify ourselves before God by works of the Law.
(2) We say, “I’m a pretty good person. I’ve tried to live a pretty good life. I think, I hope, I’ve done enough good to get into heaven.”
c. But God’s perfect Law calls back to you, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).
(1) It accuses you. You’re not the student, the friend, the parent, the child, the man, or the woman that you know you should be. You’re not even the one that you know you could be. You fail God. You fail others. You fail yourself.
(2) It condemns you. No human being is justified by works of the Law (Gal 2:16). All sin and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). You were imprisoned, enslaved, under the Law (Gal 3:23). And a slave cannot and does not remain in the house forever (Jn 8:35) but will be cast into the outer darkness (Mt 25:30).
1. But good news! “Slave” is not your identity at all!
a. That was your identity. Paul says we “were enslaved” (4:3). Now you are no longer a slave (v 7a).
b. You are redeemed and set free.
(1) For God gave you the greatest Christmas gift ever. “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (vv 4–5a). Jesus redeemed you from the curse of the Law when he took your sins upon himself, and he bore your sins in his body on the cross (3:13; 2 Pet 1:24).
(2) Christ has set you free (5:1). You are forgiven of all your sins. You are justified by faith in the Son of God, who loved you and gave himself for us (2:16, 20). “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1).
c. What’s more, you are an adopted son of God (vv 4–5).
(1) In Baptism, you “put on Christ” (3:27). You are clothed in Jesus’ righteousness. You were born again. You are marked with Jesus’ cross. “God has sent the Spirit of his Son [Jesus] into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ ” (v 6).
(2) You are now a full-fledged, adopted son of God! You’re reborn into that new identity!
d. And since you are a son, you are now also an heir of all of God’s promises (v 7). To you belongs his kingdom!
(1) In time? Today? Yes! Today, in repentance and faith, you have come and confessed your sin. And God, who is faithful and just, has looked upon you in the mercy of his only-begotten Son, your brother Jesus, and said, “I forgive you all your sins. Welcome home, my son. Yours is forgiveness, life, and salvation, now.”
(2) But also in eternity, when your brother Jesus returns in glory and says to you, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34)—free from sin, accusation, suffering, pain, sorrow, and death.
Conclusion: Who are you? A serious question. The fictional Jason Bourne spent the whole Bourne Identity looking for the answer.
On this First Sunday of Christmas, the same question has a very easy, straightforward, and joyous answer for us. An answer that comes not from your career, family name, talents, successes, failures, dreams, or even your sins. The answer to the question comes from God himself.
Because God’s Son Was Born of a Woman, Born Under the Law, You Have a Newborn Identity: Sons of God and Heirs of the Promise.
Who are you on this First Sunday after Christmas? In Christ, you are a newborn son and heir of God. Or in the words of a hymn, “I am baptized into Christ; I’m a child of paradise” (LSB 594:5)—now and forever. Amen
The Peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. Amen.
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