Tolu’s daughter was eight days old on the morning of her naming. The parlour of the small flat in Ogba was full long before the pastor arrived. Aunties sat shoulder to shoulder on borrowed plastic chairs. Someone’s teenage son had been sent to buy more bottled water. The smell of jollof rice drifted in from the kitchen, where Tolu’s mother-in-law had been cooking since five.
The baby slept through almost all of it. She slept through the opening hymn and the Bible reading. She slept while the pastor prayed over her, his hand resting lightly on her head. She stirred only when her grandmother lifted her from Tolu’s arms, held her up so the whole room could see her, and began to announce the names the family had chosen.
“Ayomide,” the grandmother said. My joy has come. The room answered with a shout. “Oluwadamilare.” The Lord has vindicated me. That one had a story behind it. Tolu had waited six years for this child, through two miscarriages and more whispered comments from relatives than she cared to remember. Another shout. “Esther.” The grandmother said each name slowly, and the aunties repeated them back, and then they sang and danced the baby around the room.
Tolu told me afterwards that she watched the whole thing with tears running down her face. Her daughter had done nothing. She had not smiled yet, or rolled over, or said a word. She had not walked a single step or passed a single exam. She could not even hold her own head up. And yet that morning she received names that would declare who she was for the rest of her life. She was joy. She was vindication. She belonged to this family. All of it was spoken over her before she had done one thing.
That is the order of God’s household. Identity comes before activity. And when we reverse that order, the whole of our spiritual growth begins to go wrong.
The first full day Adam lived
The pattern goes back to the very beginning. God made the heavens and the earth over six days, and on the sixth day He created humanity in His own image. Then Scripture tells us what happened next:
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
Think about what that means for Adam. He was created on the sixth day, near the end of God’s working week. Before he had tended a single plant or named a single animal, God looked at everything He had made, including the man, and declared that it was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). And the very next day, Adam’s first full day of life, was the day God rested.
Humanity’s first experience of existence was not work. It was rest in a finished creation and fellowship with the God who had made it. Adam did not labour his way into God’s approval and then receive a day off as a reward. He began with rest, and then he went to work. Only after this does the text tell us that “the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15).
Work was good. It was given before the fall, and it was part of what it meant to bear God’s image. Adam was called to be fruitful, to tend, to keep and to rule. But the work flowed out of a relationship already established and a goodness already declared. He worked from God’s rest, not toward it.
PunchlineThat is God’s order, and it runs right through Scripture. The gospel does not overturn it. The gospel restores it.
Mercy comes before the walk
Read Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and notice when he gets around to telling believers what to do. For three whole chapters there is almost no instruction at all. Paul simply describes what God has done. He has “blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). He has chosen us, adopted us, redeemed us, forgiven us and sealed us with the Spirit. And in chapter 2 Paul describes the turning point:
But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
Look at who is acting. “But God, who is rich in mercy... hath quickened us... hath raised us up... made us sit together in heavenly places.” We were dead. Dead people do not contribute to their own resurrection. God made us alive, raised us and seated us with Christ, all before we had done anything. And notice where we are seated. The first thing God did with us after making us alive was to sit us down.
Only then does Paul mention works, and he places them carefully: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). The works are real, and they matter. God has prepared them in advance. But they are the purpose of our new creation, not the cause of it. We are His workmanship first. The walking comes after.
Then, at the start of chapter 4, the letter turns:
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
“I therefore.” Everything that follows in chapters 4 to 6 rests on that word. Because of all that God has done in chapters 1 to 3, now walk worthy of it. Paul calls it “the vocation wherewith ye are called.” You do not walk in order to receive the calling. You walk worthy of a calling you already have. The instructions that follow are searching and practical: lowliness, patience, unity, truthful speech, honest work, kindness, forgiveness, sexual purity, faithful marriages, godly parenting, fair employment. Paul is not soft on conduct. But he will not give a single instruction until he has established who the believer is.
He keeps doing it. “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children” (Ephesians 5:1). “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8). Notice the order in that second verse. He does not say, “Walk as children of light so that you may become light.” He says, “Now are ye light. Walk as what you are.”
NuggetGod made us alive, raised us up and seated us with Christ before He ever asked us to walk. The first thing He did with the newly living was to sit them down.
The order matters because we can reverse it without changing our religious vocabulary. We still speak of grace, but privately believe that enough activity will finally make us acceptable. Spiritual growth then has to carry a burden it was never designed to bear: it must establish the relationship from which growth should proceed.
With Him before being sent
When Jesus chose His twelve apostles, Mark tells us exactly why He called them, and the order is striking:
And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him. And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils.
“He ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach.” There were two purposes, and the first was simply to be with Him. Before they preached, before they healed, before they cast out a single devil, they were called into His company. The sending would come. But it would grow out of the being with.
Look at how Jesus called them in the first place: “and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him.” He chose. They came. They were not selected because they had proved their usefulness. Several were fishermen. One was a tax collector, despised by his own people. Another was a political zealot. Not one of them had any religious training worth mentioning. Later, the authorities in Jerusalem would marvel at Peter and John because “they were unlearned and ignorant men,” and they would conclude that “they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). That was the source of everything they did.
Even when the apostles returned from their first preaching mission, full of reports about what they had accomplished, Jesus’ first response was to draw them back into His company: “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while” (Mark 6:31). The sending always returned to the being with.
There is a temptation in ministry to reverse this order. We are sent before we have been with Him, or we keep going out long after we have stopped coming back. The result is service that grows thinner and more anxious over time, because it has lost its source. Jesus said, “for without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). That is not an insult to our abilities. It is a description of where fruit actually comes from.
What the seventy were told to rejoice in
Luke records a moment that should speak to every believer who has ever been tempted to find their identity in their results. Jesus sent seventy disciples out ahead of Him, two by two, into the towns He was about to visit. When they came back, they were thrilled:
And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.
“Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.” It had been a remarkable mission. They had seen power at work. And Jesus did not dismiss what had happened. He confirmed it. He had seen Satan fall. He had given them real authority. But then He redirected their joy: “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”
Why would Jesus say that? Results do matter. But results make a very poor foundation for joy. Results change. Some missions go well, and some go badly. Some seasons are fruitful, and some are dry. A minister whose joy depends on what is happening in his ministry will be up and down with every report. A believer whose sense of worth rests on how useful she has been this month will be crushed the month she cannot serve because of illness or circumstances.
But a name written in heaven does not change with the weather. It was written by God, and it stays written. That is something you can rejoice in on the day the devils flee and on the day nothing seems to happen at all. God says through Isaiah, “Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine” (Isaiah 43:1).
Tolu’s daughter will one day pass exams and fail some. She will win prizes and be overlooked. She may become a doctor or a trader or a teacher. But none of that will change the names spoken over her on her eighth day. They were given before she achieved anything, and they will remain when her achievements are forgotten.
When activity tries to prove identity
Luke places the Father’s words to Jesus at His baptism immediately before the temptation in the wilderness. The Father had declared, “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). And the first thing the devil said was, “If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread” (Luke 4:3). The tempter went straight for the identity the Father had just spoken, and he tried to turn it into something Jesus had to prove by performance.
Jesus’ experience is unique. He is the eternal Son, and we should not flatten His identity into an exact copy of ours. But the account shows how temptation often works. It presses on identity and invites us to establish it through activity. Jesus refused. He answered, “It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” (Luke 4:4). He did not need to prove His Sonship. He lived by what the Father had said.
We should consider how often the desire to prove ourselves enters our religious activity. A person may accept an assignment because it serves people. She may also accept it because she cannot bear the thought that someone might think her less spiritual. The outward task looks the same, while the inward burden is completely different.
The difference often appears when recognition is absent. We become resentful when our service goes unnoticed, because the service was carrying an unspoken request for affirmation. Another person receives an assignment we wanted, and we feel threatened, as if their appointment diminishes us. We may call this zeal while overlooking the insecurity underneath it.
When identity comes first, a quieter faithfulness becomes possible. You do the work well. You ask for help where the task exceeds your competence. You can admit that someone else is better suited to a role without treating the admission as a loss of who you are. You can rejoice when another person is used, because your name is written in heaven whether or not your name is on the programme.
This matters most in the seasons when activity is taken away. Illness can put a busy worker in bed for months. Retirement can end a career that gave a man his sense of importance. A job loss, a relocation or the demands of caring for a sick parent can remove a woman from the ministry she loved. If identity rests on activity, those seasons feel like a kind of death. People say, “I am no longer useful,” and what they mean is, “I am no longer anybody.” But if identity came first, it remains when the activity is gone. The bedridden saint who can do nothing but pray and receive care is as fully God’s child as the evangelist addressing thousands. Her name is written in the same book.
We should also be clear about what this order does not mean. It does not mean you must wait until every question about your identity is settled before you obey. A person often learns who she is while she serves. Faith grows as we act on what God has said. The point is that the source of confidence remains clear. You can give yourself fully to an assignment without requiring the assignment to prove that the Father wants you.
Growth begins with a birth
Peter uses a simple picture to describe how spiritual growth works. He writes to believers who have been born again through the living word of God (1 Peter 1:23), and then he says:
Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
“As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.” A baby does not drink milk in order to become a baby. She drinks because she already is one, and so that she may grow. Growth is the natural development of a life that already exists. Nobody expects a newborn to earn her place in the family by growing faster.
And notice what Peter says gives the appetite: “If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.” The desire for the word grows out of an experience of grace. Babies who have tasted milk want more of it. Believers who have tasted the Lord’s kindness are drawn back to His word.
John describes the stages of growth in his first letter, and the order is significant: “I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake” (1 John 2:12). Then he speaks to young men, who are strong and have overcome the wicked one, and to fathers, who have known Him that is from the beginning. Maturity is real. There are stages. But the very first thing John says to the youngest believers is that their sins are forgiven. Growth starts there. It does not start with strength and work its way toward forgiveness. Forgiveness is the ground on which all growth stands.
This should bring great relief to anyone who feels spiritually behind. If you are a young believer, or an older believer who has stalled, your place in God’s family does not depend on how far you have grown. A toddler is as much a member of the household as her grown-up brother. And the way forward is not anxious effort to catch up. It is to keep drinking the milk of the word, which is exactly what makes a child grow.
Diligence that remembers
None of this means growth is passive. Peter, who spoke of newborn babes, also calls believers to wholehearted effort. But listen to how he frames it:
And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.
“And beside this, giving all diligence.” Beside what? The verses just before tell us. God’s “divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3), and through His great promises we have become partakers of the divine nature. The provision comes first. Then, because of it, comes the diligence. Add to your faith virtue, knowledge, self-control, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness and love.
Then comes a remarkable diagnosis. Why might a believer lack these qualities? “He that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.” The problem is forgetting. Peter does not say that the unfruitful believer has failed to try hard enough. He says that he has forgotten he was cleansed. He has lost sight of his identity, and his growth has stalled as a result.
That is a searching observation. We often assume that keeping people conscious of their failures will make them more serious about holiness. Peter says the opposite. Forgetting grace makes a person spiritually short-sighted. Remembering cleansing is part of what keeps growth moving.
So identity before activity is not an excuse for stagnation. A believer who says, “I am accepted, so it does not matter how I live,” has stopped too soon in the argument. And a teacher who calls for holy conduct without first establishing the grace from which it grows has started too late. Paul and Peter both keep the connection intact.
Paul shows how this works in the use of our gifts. He tells every believer in Rome to assess himself honestly, “to think soberly” (Romans 12:3), and then he speaks of “gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us” (Romans 12:6). Your gift is given by grace, which means both gratitude and responsibility are fitting. You do not need to imitate someone else’s assignment to make your life count. But you also cannot use a declaration about identity as an excuse for not developing the gift you actually have.
Consider a believer learning to teach. His place in Christ does not increase when a lesson goes well, or shrink when he receives useful criticism. Yet the lesson still needs preparation, and the criticism may reveal something he must learn. Assurance should make him more willing to study, because the work no longer has to protect a fragile sense of worth. The same applies at home. A father does not become more God’s child because he handles a difficult conversation patiently. But his family should feel the benefit of his growth in Christ. Identity has a practical destination.
I visited Tolu’s family about two years after the naming. Ayomide was learning to walk. She would pull herself up on the edge of the centre table, let go, take two or three wobbling steps, and sit down hard on the rug. Then she would look up at her mother to see what would happen.
PunchlineWhat happened every time was the same. Tolu would laugh, clap her hands and say, “Ayomide! Oluwadamilare! Come, my joy, come again.” And the little girl would grip the table and try again.
I noticed that nobody in that house suggested that her falls had cast doubt on her names. Nobody said she had stopped being Ayomide because she could not yet walk across the room. The names had been spoken over her before she could do anything at all, and they were spoken over her again each time she fell. In fact, it was the names that called her back to her feet. She was learning to walk inside an identity she already had.
That is how spiritual growth works in the household of God. You were named before you could do anything. “Thou art mine.” Your name is written in heaven. You have been made alive, raised up and seated with Christ. Now get up and walk, and when you fall, listen for the voice that calls you by your name. Growth is not your attempt to earn those names. It is what happens to a child who keeps hearing them.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Where do you find yourself trying to prove your identity through activity, whether in ministry, work or family life?
- Adam’s first full day was a day of rest with God. How does that change the way you think about the relationship between rest and work?
- Jesus called the twelve first “that they should be with him.” What would it look like for you to give that first purpose its proper place this week?
- When did you last rejoice more in your results than in the fact that your name is written in heaven? What happened when the results changed?
- According to 2 Peter 1:9, unfruitfulness comes from forgetting cleansing. What helps you remember?
This Week
Each morning this week, before you look at your phone or begin your work, read one of these passages and say aloud one sentence it tells you about who you are in Christ: Ephesians 2:4-7, Luke 10:20, Ephesians 5:8, 1 Peter 2:1-3, 2 Peter 1:3-4. Then choose one task for the day and do it consciously as a response to that truth rather than as an attempt to prove anything. At the end of the week, notice whether your service felt any different.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that You named me before I could do anything. Thank You that You made me alive with Christ, raised me up and seated me with Him, and that my name is written in heaven. Forgive me for the times I have tried to prove myself through my activity, and for the times I have found my joy in results rather than in You. Teach me to be with You before I am sent, and to walk worthy of the calling You have already given me. Help me to grow with diligence, never forgetting that I have been cleansed. When I fall, let me hear You call me by my name. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.