New Identity

When first-century Jews and Gentiles became believers in and followers of Christ they adopted an entirely new identity. This fact helps explain how someone like Matthew, a former tax collector (Matt. 9:9-11; 10:3), could have been accepted as a disciple of Christ in spite of his much-despised trade. 

Tax collectors were loathed by the Jewish people, since they typically collected an exorbitant amount of money: an amount for the government and an amount for themselves. Tax collectors could walk up to an individual and charge a tax merely for what that person was carrying. According to Smith's Bible Dictionary, the taxation system was

essentially a vicious one. The portitores were encouraged in the most vexatious or fraudulent exactions and a remedy was all but impossible. They overcharged whenever they had an opportunity (Luke 3:13); they brought false charges of smuggling in the hope of extorting hush-money (Luke 19:8); they detained and opened letters on mere suspicion. It was the basest of all livelihoods. All this was enough to bring the class into ill favor everywhere. (link) 

We can complain about taxes today; but we understand little with regard to the outright thievery which first-century citizens experienced under Rome. 

Again, from Smith's we read, "In addition to their other faults, accordingly, the publicans [i.e., tax collectors] of the New Testament were regarded as traitors and apostates, defiled by their frequent intercourse with the heathen, willing tools of the oppressor." (link) No doubt, many followers of Christ would have held little hope that a tax collector would have qualified as a disciple of Jesus Christ. But they were wrong. 

Not once is Matthew ever held accountable for his past actions by the other disciples or anyone else. "As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, 'Follow me.' And he got up and followed him" (Matt. 9:9 NRSV, emphasis added). Picture the scene in your mind. Matthew is at his day job, whereby he is engaged in extracting a perverse amount of money from his own Jewish people, and the Savior of humanity offers him an invitation to salvation and ministry! 

For us to picture just how offensive and shocking this may have seemed to first-century Jews, let us picture a modern-day scenario. A transvestite prostitute is offering his/her body to a client, and Jesus walks in, interrupting the exchange, and tells the transvestite, "Follow me." This is an extreme but real life situation; and Jesus steps into our real life situations, no matter the degree of degradation, in order to effect change.

If we picture Jesus as an upper-middle class, Anglo-Saxon Presbyterian, interested in only calling and saving nice, clean, socially-acceptable white people then we do not know Jesus, the Son of God, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Jesus is willing to save the thief, the blasphemer, the sexual pervert, the alcoholic, the prideful, the apathetic, the prostitute, the extortioner, the rebellious, the drug addict: He saves sinners, by grace through faith, and all people are sinners. 

But when we, by grace, place faith in Christ we are no longer identified by our former sins and failures and eccentricities. In union with Christ we are granted and assume a new identity. "Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death" (Rom. 6:4 NRSV). Note the words "baptism into death." This death is more than mere symbolism. 

Baptism (submersion) figures a drowning. Though the water symbolizes that a death took place, in actuality, by grace through faith in Christ, a death did occur. We died to our former identity. In Christ, Matthew was not defined by his tax collecting. His new identity was Christian by nature. When the other disciples looked at him they saw him in a new light. He was not Matthew, the despised Jewish apostate and traitor. Matthew was a redeemed follower of Christ, no longer to be bound by or associated with his former, sinful life. 

The same is true for me when I received Christ as Savior and Lord. I am not defined by my sexual orientation, my past sins and failures, my current struggles and shortcomings. I am a redeemed follower of Christ, purchased by the blood of Christ (1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23), and a regenerated child of God (John 3:3, 5; 1 John 3:1). Though my daily struggles remain and though I may fail, my new nature and ultimate, new identity has been changed entirely.

If I did not know Scripture so well, and understand how God views me in Christ, then I could easily adopt what some people think of me as my own identity. But I will not -- I cannot -- be defined by any other measure than the one already set by Christ Himself. In Him, neither can you.