Finding Your Identity in Christ Looks Like Death

Trillia Newbell, Blair Linne, and Rosaria Butterfield discuss what means to find your identity in Christ and not anywhere and in anyone else.

Newbell (director of community outreach for the ERLC and author of Enjoy) shares various things we can find our identity in—our job, our social status, our ethnicity, our gifts, and on. Butterfield (author of Openness Unhindered) tells us that this pursuit of finding our identity in Christ looks like death. As in the classic moves of the Reformation, Butterfield says, we’re called to destroy idols and proclaim the Word of God—and this begins with us. Linne (wife, mother, actress, and spoken word artist) reminds that good things can often become ultimate things. Our identity must be rooted in who Christ says we are.

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Trillia Newbell is the author of several books including A Great Cloud of Witnesses, Sacred Endurance, If God Is For Us, Fear and Faith, and children’s books Creative God, Colorful Us and God’s Very Good Idea. She encourages and supports other writers as the acquisitions director at Moody Publishers. Trillia is married to her best friend, Thern. They reside with their two children near Nashville. You can find her at her website and follow her on Instagram.

Blair Linne is the author of Finding My Father. She is a Bible teacher, actress, spoken word artist, and the creator of the podcast GLO with The Gospel Coalition. Blair has toured globally and is known as one of the originators of the Christian Spoken Word genre. Proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ through speaking and spoken word is her passion. She and her husband, Shai, live in Portland, Oregon, with their three children.

Rosaria Butterfield is a former tenured professor of English at Syracuse University and author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Crown & Covenant, 2012) and Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ (Crown & Covenant, 2015). Her new book is The Gospel Comes with a House Key (Crossway, 2018).