Derek Thomas

It's an important contemporary issue, the issue of identity in a culture that isn't sure of one's identity, one's sexual identity, for example.

And the whole issue with Facebook and the like and Facebook

that there can be 64 different categories of identity, and young people and teenagers are supposed to find their identity, and no wonder they're lost, and no wonder they're in a mess, because it's impossible to know what your identity is if it's based on whims and fancies and not on the solid truth of God and the principles, say, of creation, and God creates as male and female.

Well, into that culture,

Paul is addressing, what is a Christian?

And a Christian is somebody who is no longer in union with Adam.

That Adamic self is gone.

I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live.

That old I, that old me is gone.

But Christ who lives in me.

Union with Christ.

I am a man in Christ.

That's who I am.

I am somebody who is in union and communion with the risen, ascended Christ.

It is at the heart of Pauline theology.

He uses that little phrase, en Christo, in Christ, 67, 68 times in the course of his writings.

I sometimes think if we were to find, for example, one of the lost epistles that Paul wrote to the Corinthians.

in between 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, he mentions another letter that isn't 1 Corinthians, and we don't have that letter.

And I sometimes wonder, how would you know if that letter were to be discovered?