“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Matthew 3:17
This is what God shouts from the skies as Jesus is being baptized. We have just heard God proclaim Jesus’ primary identity. Sure, Jesus was other things too—carpenter, brother, Jewish man, Messiah and so on—but those are all just secondary identities. What really matters is who Jesus is under all that other stuff. When you dig down as deep as you can go, what you find is that at Jesus’ deepest, most real level, Jesus is God’s Son, the Beloved, with whom God is well pleased. And I will tell you that at your deepest and most real level and at my deepest and most real level our primary identities are exactly the same as Jesus’ primary identity. No matter what identities we have piled on top of our primary identity, at our core each and every one of us is God’s child, God’s beloved with whom God is well pleased.