Gender - Fixed or Fluid? - Colossians 3:1-11

Gender - Fixed or Fluid? - Colossians 3:1-11Series: Made In God's ImagePreacher: Jonny GrantDate: 21st January 2018Passage: Colossians 3:1-11-------------------Made In God’s Image\r\n- Is Gender Fixed or Fluid?\r\nWho am I?\r\n- Vocation; Ethnicity; Religion; Class; Gender. \r\n\r\n‘We recognise that people face challenges sharing their true identity with others, and this setting gives people the ability to express themselves in an authentic way.’ Facebook \r\n\r\nTransgender: A person whose gender identity does not correspond to that person’s biological sex assigned at birth.\r\n\r\niWorld\r\n\r\n‘The names of his apple products - the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad - are striking. Jobs knew that we live in the iWorld, in which everything revolves around the individual.’ Dale Kuehne; Sex and the iWorld \r\n\r\nCreated by God\r\n- Creators design\r\n- Creators word\r\n\r\n‘When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy. Those divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshal us where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted.’ CS Lewis \r\n\r\nUnited to Christ\r\n- In Christ\r\n\r\n‘By Faith you are so cemented to Christ that he and you are as one person, which cannot be separated but remains attached to Christ forever and declares: “I am as Christ.” And Christ in turn says: “I am as that sinner who is attached to Me, and I to him.’ Martin Luther\r\n\r\n- New identity\r\n\r\nFilled with the Spirit\r\n- Be who you are\r\n\r\n‘If I had to summarize New testament ethics in one sentence, here’s how I would put it; Be who you are. That might seem strange, almost heretical given our cultures emphasis on being true to yourself. But like so many of the worst errors in the world, this one represents a truth powerfully perverted. When people say: ‘Relax, you were born that way.’ or ‘Quit trying to be something you’re not and just be the real you.’ they are stumbling upon something very biblical. God does want you to be the real you. He does want you to be true to yourself. But the ‘you’ he’s talk about is the ‘you’ that you are saved by grace, not by nature. God doesn’t say, ‘Relax, you were born this way.’ But he does say, ‘Good news, you were reborn another way.’\r\n\r\nKevin DeYoung\r\n\r\n- Become who you are