People in every generation struggle to find their identity.
According to a study by Horowitz Research and Vox Media, two in five Gen Zers want to be asked who they are. This is a shift away from wanting to be told who they are by society. This generation wants to own their identity. The study also revealed Gen Z prefers labels based on personality traits and preferences rather than on society’s emphasis on gender, race, and physical characteristics. The approach is more subjective, yet Gen Z’s preferences are just another version of the pursuit of identity based on superficial characteristics.
Sarah Rice’s Gospel-Shaped Womanhood: How Losing Yourself and Finding Your Identity in Christ Changes Everything offers a countercultural perspective on identity. Books, social media, and podcasts offer women endless tips on how to be better versions of themselves. The prevailing culture teaches women to pursue salvation through self-definition and self-sufficiency. In contrast, Rice points women toward dependence on the God who created them. She argues we should find our identity in Christ.
Gospel-Shaped Worth
At a surface level, claiming our identity is in Christ “can seem like a trite theological simplification of our unique personhood” (25). However, Rice argues, “Our quest to find ourselves is driven by two bigger questions that plague us as women: Do I possess true worth? and What are the sources and measures of my worth?” (25). These questions require deep thinking and complex answers.
Why are questions about worth so common? It’s because deep down we all feel unworthy. And, in reality, we are. In some circles, feeling unworthy is the sanitized substitute for sinfulness. That leads to the lie that Christianity should be about building our confidence. Yet when we struggle with our worth, it may be that we’re being convicted of our sinfulness before a holy God.
It matters where we find our worth. Christ makes us worthy through the gospel. Our worth comes from him, not from our labels, our achievements, or ourselves.
Christ makes us worthy through the gospel. Our worth comes from him, not from our labels, our achievements, or our selves.
We’re measured by God’s standard, but as Rice points out, “Incredibly, Christ’s righteousness is credited to us, so that when God looks at believers, he sees the perfection of his Son rather than image-bearers marred by sin. In Christ, our position is worthiness before God, and his heart is full of affection toward us” (33). In Christ, women have gospel-shaped worth.
Gospel-Shaped Empowerment
Feminism promises to provide more rights and opportunities for women. At one level, this is biblical. The Bible teaches that women are image-bearers of God and are equal to men in worth and personhood. We can celebrate the good things women’s empowerment has wrought.
However, the focus of women’s empowerment is often not simple equality. Rice explains,
Largely, feminism is a movement of women seeking to empower women for the sake of fulfilling and glorifying women. . . . Christianity, on the other hand, is a movement of God by which the Spirit empowers women to know their true identity and fulfill a mission that’s bigger and more glorious than themselves” (48).
Gospel-shaped women find freedom in living Spirit-empowered lives.
Female empowerment often promises more than it can deliver. Rice argues, “Women cannot ultimately right all that is wrong. Women cannot remedy the human condition or redeem the cosmos. We cannot heal all the wounds of abuse and set every captive free” (52). Instead, we’re invited to trust in an unlimited God who knows all the abuses women have suffered and will make all things right and new through the sacrifice of his Son (2 Cor. 5:21).
Christ is the example for women who seek to honor him. He denied himself. Similarly, Christian women should deny themselves. But this conflicts with many modern notions of womanhood, which equate “female empowerment with autonomy—a woman’s freedom to submit only to herself. Jesus, however, says real freedom comes only by knowing him and abiding in his Word through continual trust and obedience” (51). Gospel-shaped empowerment frees us from focusing on ourselves, because we see Christ’s example of self-denial. That empowerment leads to the transformation of every aspect of life.
Gospel-Shaped Self
In Strange New World, Carl Trueman writes, “The modern self assumes the authority of inner feelings and sees authenticity as defined by the ability to give social expression to the same.” As we’ve seen, this conflicts with what Scripture teaches about our identity.
Christ is the example for women who seek to honor him. He denied himself. Similarly, Christian women should deny themselves.
Our identity isn’t ours to own or create. Our Creator defines it. Authenticating our personhood via societal approval has no place in a Christian’s notion of identity formation. Rice says, “The goal of Christian women is not to be remembered but to faithfully serve a Savior who will never be forgotten” (177). A Christian woman doesn’t seek societal approval of her actions; she seeks the approval of her Savior who has already granted this through her new identity in the gospel. This foundational theme isn’t unique to Rice, but it’s necessary in a culture that consistently pulls in the opposite direction.
Gospel-Shaped Womanhood is helpful because it begins the identity discussion on the most basic level. It makes a good prerequisite for reading books like Melissa Kruger’s Growing Together, which covers a broader spectrum of discipleship topics. Rice takes a simpler theological approach than Jen Wilkin’s In His Image, which begins with God’s communicable attributes as our foundation for identity. Those looking for a ground-floor entry into questions of identity will benefit from Rice’s book.
This is a resource I’ll use for discipling women, especially new believers, on the nature of the gospel and how that affects every part of life, not just eternal salvation. And as Gen Z’s view of identity transitions away from the outer self to the inner, this book can help equip these young women to love the Lord their God with all their heart and mind.
The Gospel Coalition