In our culture, getting Blue Check Verified on social media is a sign of notoriety. When social media was born anyone could sign up as anyone. This created the problem many problems, one of which was not knowing who was the real person you were trying to follow. Most of us went with the person who had the most followers or likes. Unfortunately, many times the most popular didn’t equate to the right person. So social media companies began verifying popular and adding a blue check mark next to their name so we could all trust we found the right person. Many of us never got the blue check verification. Many of us don’t care about the blue check.
Who verifies your identity? Who affirms who you are? Many of us rely on ourselves to build our identity. Many of us add our vocation, our families, our nation, our proficiencies, and more to develop our sense of identity.
Paul is addressing the human drive to define ourselves in the first verse of Galatians. Paul introduces his name, his role in the Kingdom of God, and how he got that role. It wasn’t some board or committee. It wasn’t because he had a degree from a well known institution. Paul boldly says “I am an apostle because God made me one.”
Paul then goes on to give God’s credentials in case the title “God” doesn’t convince you. Those credentials were simple: raised from the dead.
Here’s our takeaway: let’s embrace the source of identity. God defines who we are. He gets to do that because He is God and He proved it by raising Himself from the dead. We may not matter in the Twitterverse or whatever Mark is calling his Facebook-meta-land, but we matter to God.