Collection: June 2024 Tabletalk

The June 2024 issue of Tabletalk will provide an overview of the biblical concept of identity. Modern notions of identity promote self-worship and fluidity. We are encouraged to find our identity in whatever makes us happy according to our ever-changing feelings and desires. But the Bible reveals that our identity has been established by God from the very beginning when He “created man male and female, after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 10). The fall, however, has marred man’s capacity to reflect his Creator. Men and women, left to their natural conditions, now look to idols to define our identity. Yet in Christ, God is restoring His people to reflect His image as He originally intended. The Bible, therefore, calls Christians to consider ourselves “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ” (Rom. 6:11), using several images that describe who we are in Christ. This issue of Tabletalk will help readers understand the biblical teaching on human identity, including what it means to be made in the image of God, what the various identities are that are assigned to us by God according to His providence, and what it means for our identity to be “in Christ.” It will further explore contemporary issues of identity, including gender and sexual identity. Finally, it will emphasize the need for Christians to remember their true and objective identity, especially when subjective experience and the world urge otherwise.

Contributors include Burk Parsons, A. Craig Troxel, Jonathan Landry Cruse, David Mathis, Jeremy Pierre, Sinclair B. Ferguson, Andrew M. Davis, Kara Dedert, Jonathan L. Master, R. Carlton Wynne, Robert Rothwell, Geoffrey Thomas, David Strain, Jacob Gerber, and Ben Shaw.