Identity — it is one of our society’s greatest obsessions today. Even we Christians can preoccupy ourselves with knowing who we are and what our purpose is. This pursuit is not altogether bad. The desire to understand who we are and what we are here for is natural and God-given. The problem arises when we look in the wrong places to discover our identity and purpose.

Many look to social media, self-help resources, life coaches, models of the psyche — you name it — for direction and affirmation. We may even naively accept mantras like “Be true to yourself” and “You do you,” thinking we can determine our own identities and express them however we want. But such paths lead only to more confusion and despair.

If we as Christians want to understand who we are, we must look to Jesus Christ. As the God-man, he is the true revelation of both God and of humanity. He alone can reveal to us who we are. And one concrete way he reveals our identities is through his appointed Supper.

People Who Remember

The Lord’s Supper, along with baptism, is one of the most debated Christian practices. Believers from various traditions disagree over what exactly happens during the meal; we also disagree over how frequently it should be celebrated. Despite such disagreements, all Christians agree on at least this: the Lord’s Supper is a meal whereby we remember who Christ is and what he has done for us (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24–25).

Many of us do not realize, however, that the Lord’s Supper is also a time when we remember who we are in Christ. In a key way, the Table strengthens our identity in him. Indeed, Christ himself forms and fortifies our identity in this meal because he is present to us and lives in us (John 14:20, 23; 17:23, 26). Just as food and drink strengthen the body, so Christ’s body and blood, received by faith, strengthen our souls in a way that helps us understand ourselves.

The Lord’s Supper shapes our identity in part because the meal is analogous to the Passover. The Passover was a ritual feast whereby the Israelites meditated on God’s saving actions and reassured themselves of who they were as God’s people. They identified themselves with the exodus generation every time they celebrated the rite.

When Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples on the night before his death, he did far more than identify with the exodus generation; he gave the meal greater significance because he was about to accomplish his mission as the true Passover Lamb. Just as the historical exodus and old covenant defined Israel’s existence, so Christ enacted a new exodus and a new covenant that now defines our existence in him — our very identity and way of life. And when Jesus commanded us to eat in remembrance of him (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24–25), he was not instructing us to simply ponder past events, just as he was not simply recalling the exodus when he celebrated the Passover with his disciples.

Many today think that to remember is to merely think about something from the past. But biblically, to remember involves bringing the past into the present and allowing the past to actively shape the present. So, when we remember Christ in the Supper, we are not thinking about someone who is absent and disconnected from us. Rather, we are, by faith, identifying with and being shaped by someone who is with us — indeed, in us.

Because remembrance is an act of identification, we identify with Christ when we partake of the Holy Meal. Like the Passover, therefore, the Supper shapes our identity. When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we taste who we are: people loved and redeemed by the Lord of all life. We belong to him, and we are made to be like him. And when we feast on Christ by faith, he transforms us more and more into his own image.

People Who Commune

Because we belong to the Lord Jesus and are made to be like him, we cannot find our true identity by looking inside ourselves. The Lord’s Supper subverts the notion that identity is an individualistic enterprise because in this meal we participate with Christ. “The cup of blessing that we bless,” Paul writes, “is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16). Thus, many Christians rightly call this meal Communion. By it, we fellowship with Christ and remember that we are people who live in vital connection with Christ — like branches joined to the vine or a body to the head (John 15:1–6; Ephesians 5:23; Colossians 1:18).

And as people united to Christ, we are also united to other Christians. Paul explains, “The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16). We participate in Christ as well as in the life of the church, who is vitally connected to Christ the head. Paul continues, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:17). By sharing this meal, we declare to both ourselves and one another that we are communing persons: we belong to Christ and each other.

We are not isolated selves. We do not have the inner resources to become whoever we want to be. Nor do we have leeway to live however we want. We are joined to the Lord Almighty, who alone has a rightful claim on all creation. And we belong to the body of Christ, the community of faith that shapes us and shows us how to live.

People Who Proclaim

Because we are people joined to Christ and his body, the church, our purpose in life is not to self-actualize and self-gratify. We have been chosen and redeemed so that we may joyfully serve and glorify God.

When we partake of the Lord’s Supper, we proclaim Christ’s death until he returns (1 Corinthians 11:26). Yet such proclamation is not limited to our sharing in this meal of thanksgiving — thus the name Eucharist (from the Greek word for thanksgiving). As persons who participate in Christ, we are called to proclaim him with our entire lives. As we eat the bread and drink the cup, God reminds us that we are called to be eucharistic persons, persons who gratefully proclaim the goodness of Christ crucified with all we are in all we do.

Our purpose in life, therefore, is not to express ourselves but to express Christ. Our focus ought to be on him and not ourselves because he is our life (Colossians 3:4), and the life we now live we live by faith in him (Galatians 2:20).

When we receive the Lord’s Supper, we remember that our lives are not our own. We do not exist for ourselves, and we do not live for ourselves. We live for and with Christ, who “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

When we receive the Supper, we remember that we have died with Christ in baptism and that he bids us take up our crosses in daily death to self, just as he humbled himself throughout his earthly life and ultimately gave himself on the cross on our behalf. We are united with the truly self-sacrificial one so that we too may live self-sacrificially — for the good of others and to the glory of God. When we continually die to ourselves, in this meal and in our daily lives, we become more like him, the true human. When we conform to him, we become more authentically human. This is where the Supper leads us.

The seemingly mundane elements of the Lord’s Supper force us to reimagine who we are. They reveal that we are a people who belong to Christ, a people identified with Christ, a people shaped by Christ, and a people becoming like Christ. We are redeemed by him, and we exist for him. He is our life, and he determines our identity. When we look to Christ in this most holy of meals, we see more clearly who Christ is and who we are in him. And as we commune with him, we become more like him. The Table truly reshapes and fortifies our identity.

Perhaps you will feel the same discomfort I felt overhearing saints of old speak of death.

“He who does not prepare for death is more than an ordinary fool. He is a madman,” began Charles Spurgeon.

“Agreed,” said the good Doctor Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Men seem to ignore the plain fact that “the moment you come into this world you are beginning to go out of it.”

But this fact need not spell doom and gloom for the Christian, Spurgeon responded. “The best moment of a Christian’s life is his last one, because it is the one that is nearest heaven.”

“I concur fully,” Richard Sibbes chimed in. “Death is not now the death of me, but death will be the death of my misery, the death of my sins; it will be the death of my corruptions. But death will be my birthday in regard of happiness.”

“When Christ calls me home,” Adoniram Judson added, “I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from school.”

“May I also interject?” asked Calvin. “We may positively state that nobody has made any progress in the school of Christ, unless he cheerfully looks forward towards the day of his death, and towards the day of the final resurrection.”

“This strikes me as true,” said Thomas Brooks. “It is no credit to your heavenly Father for you to be loath to go home.”

“And why should we hesitate?” Samuel Bolton questioned. It is the “privilege of saints, that they shall not die until the best time, not until when, if they were but rightly informed, they would desire to die.”

“Exactly.” For the child of God, “death is the funeral of all our sorrows,” reasoned Thomas Watson. “Death will set a true saint out of the gunshot and free him from sin and trouble.”

“Indeed,” John Bunyan added, “death is but a passage out of a prison into a palace.”

As I listened, I overheard the most disquieting questions. “Has this world been so kind to you that you would leave it with regret?” C.S. Lewis posed. “If we really believe that home is elsewhere and that this life is a ‘wandering to find home,’ why should we not look forward to the arrival?”

“Hear! Hear!” exclaimed William Gurnall. “Let thy hope of heaven master thy fear of death. Why shouldest thou be afraid to die, who hopest to live by dying?”

“I am packed, sealed, and waiting for the post,” cried John Newton. “Who would live always in such a world as this?”

Even snippets of their prayers issued a subtle rebuke. I could not help but hear one George Whitefield plead, “Lord, keep me from a sinful and too eager desire after death. I desire not to be impatient. I wish quietly to wait till my blessed change comes.”

This proved the final blow. These men anticipated death, viewed an early departure as a “promotion.” I lowered my gaze. I rarely think this way, rarely feel this way. Do I really believe in heaven? Do I really love my Lord?

Snuggled in This Life

My squeamishness, flipping through an anthology of Christian quotes, helped me realize that my discipleship has slanted too American, too shortsighted, too this-worldly.

“Are you packed and ready to go?” Well, I was hoping to set sail several decades from now, so —

“Has this world been so kind to you that you would leave it with regret?” Well, I wouldn’t give it a ten-star rating, but it certainly hasn’t been half that bad (yet). So yeah, maybe —

“Nobody has made any progress in the school of Christ, unless he cheerfully looks forward towards the day of his death, and towards the day of the final resurrection.” Well, that’s intense.

“It is no credit to your heavenly Father for you to be loath to go home.” I see — worthy point. No credit to Jesus either, I imagine.

“These men daily lived awake to the truths I daily profess to believe.”

These men daily lived awake to the truths I daily profess to believe; they inhabited them, longing to fly away and be with Christ. Although they loved families, enjoyed things of earth, and did good in this world, they nevertheless were unafraid to dive headfirst into those cold waters of death at the first moment their Master allowed. They believed, with Paul, that “to depart and be with Christ . . . is far better” (Philippians 1:23).

I discovered then just how snuggled by the fireside I had become in this world. A place I too readily felt to be home.

Epitaphs of Exiles

My heart can live too much here, too little there. “My life is hidden with Christ,” I must remind myself (Colossians 3:3). As this world seeks to entice my affections to linger in its marketplace, I desire to be more of a heavenly disciple. And if you love Jesus but think too little of the life to come, I know you will agree. Oh, that this might be a true inscription over our graves, and all the more since we live after the coming of Christ, and the down payment of the Spirit:

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. (Hebrews 11:13–16)

Abraham, by faith, left his home in Mesopotamia, not even knowing where God was leading him (Hebrews 11:8). He lived in the promised land before he could call it home, dwelling there as a foreigner. Isaac and Jacob, heirs with Abraham of God’s promise, lived in tents of temporality; their home was not yet (Hebrews 11:9).

“Once God saved them, they refused to unpack their hopes again in this world.”

Abraham’s eyes were elsewhere. “He was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10). And he and his sons bore the heavenly insignia in their speech: they acknowledged, to anyone who cared to know, that they would live and die on this earth as exiles and sojourners (Genesis 23:4; 47:9). Once God saved them, they refused to unpack their hopes again in this world. The land far-off — big as God’s promise, sure as God’s word — held their allegiance. They made it clear that they sought a homeland not built by human hands.

As the world tried to tempt them back, the bait remained on the hook. Better to live in a tent in this world with a heavenly city before them than to dwell in the tottering kingdoms of men. They desired a better country, a heavenly one. And God is not ashamed to be called “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). He is not ashamed in the least to be the one they so hoped in, for he has prepared for them a city.

Still at Sea

So, is your mind mainly set on this world or the next?

This world is not our home, precious saint. We are not yet in our element. We fling open the window and send our dove about this earth, finding that it returns to us having found no homeland within this watery grave. But this world will be drained soon enough. The swells of judgment shall intensify and then subside. The new heavens and new earth shall arrive, and our Mighty Dove shall descend with a sword in his mouth for his enemies and an olive branch for us.

Until then, keep waiting, keep hoping, keep acknowledging, keep living in tents, longing for that moment when we can bound away from this world as the Father calls us home.

Just last week it was a necklace.

My 6-year-old daughter brought me the tangled mess and pled for help. With a little effort and patience, it was like new in a few minutes.

The week before it was leather strings on a baseball glove. First we had to loosen two entrenched knots; then we could tighten up the space between the fingers.

Before that, it was a shoestring. And every winter, on repeat, it’s the laces on the kids’ ice skates.

As a father of four, I find myself working regularly at untying knots. I try to count it a privilege, rather than burden. Parents often undo knots for our children, not only because we have the required strength in our hands and the tips of our fingers, but also, let’s hope, because we have the required patience.

Whether repairing a ball glove or unlacing a shoestring, complex knots require both strength and strategy, both effort and patience. The task simultaneously makes two demands on us that create a certain tension: engage your attention and energy and, at the same time, exercise patience. If you dive right in and start pulling on strings, you will worsen the knot. Or, if you only observe the tangle, and reflect on strategy, but neglect to actually engage your fingers, the knot will only persist.

This duel demand for initiative and patience, for effort and composure, captures well what Christ often requires of local-church leaders in the complexities of church life. We regularly go to work on untying figurative knots, complex relational messes — and with the stakes raised. Here neglect won’t leave the knot as is, but only make it worse.

Knotty by Nature

The risen Christ calls pastor-elders to two main tasks in the local church: teaching and governing. To make it rhyme, we feed and we lead. We exercise abilities to teach God’s word, and we exercise oversight to lead the church. So, among other qualifications, pastor-elders must be both “able to teach” and “sober-minded.”

Strangely, some aspiring or current pastors would rather not teach. This is odd, and not ideal, and may reflect confusion about the nature of the office. Among other things, pastors are teachers, and as Don Carson captures it well,

A substantial part of the ruling/oversight function is discharged through the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. This is where a great deal of the best leadership is exercised: “What does Scripture say?” means “What does God say?”

From the beginning, Christianity has been a teaching movement. Its best leaders teach, and its best teachers soon become leaders. Healthy churches thrive on ongoing, healthy preaching and teaching.

However, as vital as pastoral word-ministry is, this is not the entirety of the calling. Carson lands the other foot:

Oversight of the church is more than simply teaching and preaching. . . . [A] comprehensive vision of the ministry of the Word demands oversight . . . of the entire direction and priorities of the church. . . . [I]f [a man] shows no propensity for godly oversight, then no matter how good a teacher he may be, he is not qualified to be a pastor/teacher/overseer.

We not only feed and teach but also lead and govern. And in this exercise of oversight is the underserviced task of regularly untying some complicated knots — that is, seeking to bring order to the chaos of church life.

Order in the Church

Paul in particular writes about the need for “order” in church life and assumes this to be, in some measure, the work of Christian leaders.

“From the beginning, Christianity has been a teaching movement. Its best leaders teach, and its best teachers soon become leaders.”

This is his explicit commission to Titus as his delegate: “I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town . . .” (Titus 1:5). Not only will Titus’s own teaching and oversight bring order to the disordered young church, but also the appointing of elders will bring about further order. Their very appointment will create clarity and structure in church life, and then the tangible effects of their work, over time, as they are faithful and fruitful, will bring more order.

This was true for Paul himself, as he saw it, in his apostolic teaching and governing. Speaking frankly to the Corinthians about marriage and divided interests, he writes, “I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:35). He would not be content with confusion and disarray in the household of God. Bringing order to the chaos would be a fitting summary of his work in both spoken and written word.

Perhaps Paul’s most memorable mention of “order” comes in the context of corporate worship, in the same letter to Corinth. Here he lays it down almost as a maxim: “all things should be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40). If we ask why, Paul has given his reason already, in the context, grounding it in the nature of God himself: “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33).

The language of “decently” in verse 40 that Paul pairs with order (“decently and in order”) is the same as his charge to “walk properly” in Romans 13:13 and 1 Thessalonians 4:12. Beneath the collective order and decency of church life is the order and decency produced in individual Christian lives by the Spirit through steadfast faith: “though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ” (Colossians 2:5).

Sin brings chaos, disorder, and confusion to human lives and relationships, and so one critical aspect in Christian ministry is our envisioning restored order and seeking to move our people, from their hearts, toward that order. Increasing order and holy propriety, on God’s terms, characterizes the maturing Christian life, and maturing church. Which makes it very much a pastoral concern.

Order on the Way to Order

Such order not only means putting desires and words and behaviors in their proper places, but also having a sense of sequence, the steps in which the vision might be pursued — the order in which to pursue the order.

Some issues in church life are simple and can be addressed in single actions. These issues might appear on the pastors’ meeting agenda once, and in a manner of minutes, a next and final action becomes clear. This was no knot; just a need. The pastors gave it their brief focus, made a decision, and life moves on.

But other issues are complex and cannot be tackled all at once. They appear on the agenda meeting after meeting for a season. These thorny situations cannot be adequately addressed in a single discussion and action but require a sequence of actions — some particular wise arrangement of steps, in proper succession, toward the goal of restored order.

This sequence is the order on the way to order. This is the kind of order Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians 15:22–24, where one item follows another in proper sequence:

in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end . . .

We see such ordered sequences particularly in Luke’s Gospel and its sequel. Luke explicitly set out “to write an orderly account” (Luke 1:3) and speaks of events in the life of Christ that followed after others (Luke 8:1). In Acts, Peter explains his story “in order” (Acts 11:4), specific prophets follow after others (Acts 3:24), and Paul moves “from one place to the next” in his missionary journeys (Acts 18:23).

In God’s ordered world, sequences matter — in biblical events, and in pastoral ministry — and especially when we encounter the most complex and convoluted of knots. Able oversight (“ruling well,” 1 Timothy 5:17) requires more than a single moment, meeting, action, or conversation, but humble and evolving multiple-step processes of pastoral attention, and the pastoral superpower called patience.

Call for Attention

First, gnarly pastoral knots demand our attention and engagement. Here the danger is neglect. We’d rather not deal with this complicated and emotionally draining issue: the divisive person, the troubled marriage, the flagging finances. We got into this work to preach and teach the Bible, and would rather not have to untangle all these thorny knots.

True, some potential ministry “black holes” might quickly drain far more energy and time from us than they are worth. We can consider that and set boundaries. But negligence is not the answer. Rather, as a team, we need to dedicate sufficient time to getting our minds together around enough of the details to make wise collective decisions that aren’t manifestly distorted by glaring unawareness.

Our tendency once briefed, especially as men, can be to get the problem fixed all at once. Again, some pastoral issues require only one step. But many need sequences. And when we come across these complicated knotty ones, we do well to identify one clear, worthwhile next step, even as we begin to envision some kind of sequence of actions toward resolution, whether it might take weeks or months or longer.

The need of the hour is to decide what step to take next, then gather further intel, and later identify the following step. All the while, the team keeps moving the issue forward, however deliberate the pace, and doesn’t let it stall out and go underground.

Call for Patience

It’s one thing to get up to speed and begin a sequence, one careful step at a time. But it’s another to walk the process with patience. And note well, true patience is not neglect. Patience is not slumber or naivety. Patience is wide awake and alert, with self-control.

Here the danger is hurry. We’ve assessed the problem and are ready to fix it right now. But complex knots can’t be expedited. We must untangle a thread at a time. Often these clusters are so layered that we cannot see all its sections at the outset. We need to first untangle a strand or two, or a few, to then get a line of sight deeper into the nub and discern what steps will follow.

Christian patience is not laxity. Nor is it weak, if rightly exercised, but a force for good. Spurgeon was speaking about his deacons, but might as well have been speaking of pastor-elders, when he said that such spiritually mature men “reduce chaos to order by the mere force of Christian patience” (Spurgeon the Pastor, 162). Even if we don’t smite the beast in one fell swoop, there is power in a band of godly men deliberately surrounding a nuisance, keeping their eyes on it, and moving slowly toward it together. We can be confident of resolution in due time.

After all, the pastor-elders should embody and exemplify normal, healthy Christian maturity, and be among the most patient souls in the church, and also the least resigned. They should be resolute about not being lazy or apathetic, and be assured of Christ’s commitment to build and bless his church.

We learn to roll our anxieties onto the broad shoulders of our chief Shepherd, and try to count it a privilege, rather than burden, to work at untying these knots.