What's Actually Broken in Us
The Gospel Fixes More than We Know
Consider this:
The longing we feel isn’t so much
a sign that something is missing.
It’s more a sign that something once whole
has been lost—and can now be restored.
We all know that there’s more to life than we usually experience. It’s a steady awareness that life was meant to feel … more. More whole, grounded and alive than it often does.
This awareness immediately drives us to ask: What can we do about it? But although this is a natural question, it’s unfortunately the wrong question—it assumes we already understand the problem.
“What can we do?” is a strategy question. And if we haven’t identified the actual problem, no amount of strategy will help us.1
And it most likely will hurt us—especially when it comes to making disciples. Because the church won’t have anything to offer a world longing for more if it has no solution itself.
We can’t fix a problem we haven’t identified.
What’s Really Broken?
This is where it gets a bit tricky. Because our Western Christian orientation quickly blames sin as the problem, and just as quickly points to the gospel as the solution.
This isn’t wrong, but it is too narrow in scope. After all, if we’re so settled on sin as the problem and the gospel as the solution, why does our longing persist?
Here’s the reality: While sin is indeed the problem (and the gospel is indeed the solution), we don’t fully comprehend the scope of the problem of sin, and what sin actually broke.
And because we don’t know what’s actually broken, we don’t understand what the gospel actually fixes.
Sin As Separation
Our longing for more in life reflects a reality Scripture describes in simple but far-reaching terms: separation.
The Fall didn’t just cause humanity to begin doing bad things; it disconnected us from the source of life itself. Living in full dependence on God was replaced with distance from him.
That separation existentially reshaped us. Rest became striving, peace became uncertainty and openness became vulnerability. Life’s “normal” patterns trace back to that shift, even if we don’t recognize it:
We try to secure our own sense of worth.
We manage outcomes we can’t control.
We search for meaning in temporal things.
Defining sin as “falling short of God’s glory”—our typical Western definition—turns our focus toward behavior: our failure to live up to God’s standard of holiness. But defining sin as “separation from God” reveals that our unrighteous behavior is an outcome that flows from something deeper.
Sin isn’t just unrighteous behavior and a state of unholiness; it’s separation from the source of all righteousness and holiness.2
Identity: What We Were Made For (and What Changed)
In my previous article—You Were Designed to Depend—we explored what it means to be created as dependent beings. We were designed to receive our identity, meaning and purpose from God, not to generate them from within. That dependence wasn’t a limitation; it was the structure of life itself.
When separation occurred, our identity shifted with it.
Instead of receiving who we are, we try to define ourselves.
Instead of living from connection, we live from independence.
That shift didn’t just change what we do; it changed what we believe about ourselves. We’ve learned to live as if we direct our life, expecting God to help us be who we want to be—even as we feel the weight of sustaining it.
Reconciliation: What the Gospel Fixes
If separation is our problem, then the solution cannot simply be our improvement.
So the gospel addresses the root issue by restoring what was broken: our connection to God. Through Jesus, reconciliation with God becomes reality—not only as an eternal hope, but as a present truth; not only as status and classification, but as relationship.
This is so much more than being forgiven of our sins. It means being brought near, reconnected to the source of life itself (Ephesians 2.13-18).
A New Identity to Receive
(and Freedom From the Old One)
Being connected to God doesn’t upgrade our identity; it gives us an entirely new identity (2 Corinthians 5.11-21). Scripture describes living in this new identity as “putting off the old self” and “putting on the new” (see Ephesians 4.22-24, Colossians 3.5-10).
To receive our new and dependent identity, we must actively abandon our old, independent one. This is a mix of paradoxical actions:
Letting go of our right to live independently and autonomously (literally “self-rule”)—something we’ve done all our lives …
in order to …
Grab hold of a life of dependency and letting someone else direct us (specifically, the Holy Spirit)—something life and the world have conditioned us to be afraid of.
But this raises an important—and often confusing—question: What happens to our old identity when we let it go?
A complicating factor is that getting our new identity doesn’t eliminate the old one. Romans 6 confirms that in our baptism with Christ, it was our old identity’s power over us that died, not the identity itself. We’re no longer bound to live from the old self (though it still compels us to).3
In other words, we now are free to practice a new kind of responsibility: to choose which self-perception we will live from—independent, or dependent.
Collective Identity: Restored Together
Another part of our problem is that sin not only separated us from God, it separated us from each other.
Our new identity addresses this problem because it’s simultaneously individual and collective. Scripture consistently describes us in communal terms: a body, a family, a household, a people, a kingdom. We are individual reflections of Jesus, and at the same time members together of that body.
So our new identity not only eliminates our independence from God, it eliminates our independence from each other. We are uniquely distinct from each other, yet intimately interdependent with each other. We reflect our triune God in that we who are many are also one—and neither our individuality or our unity is compromised.
The writer of Hebrews captures this reality in a way that challenges our assumptions:
“They were all commended for their faith,
yet none of them received
what had been promised,
since God had planned something better for us
so that only together with us
would they be made perfect.”
(Hebrews 11.39-40)
Let this sink in: The heroes of the faith that preceded us are made complete through our collective practice of faith today.
The gospel isn’t manifested in isolation, as some kind of individual transaction. We’ve been brought into something that’s bigger than us: An identity that’s interwoven, collectively and across time.
We are the body of Christ.
Where Do We Go From Here?
So … We now have our new identity—but we still live with the pull of the old one. So how do we actually live from what’s now true?
My next article will address how to practically live out the gospel of our reconciliation by putting it into practice. Specifically, this involves putting off the old self and putting on our new one that looks like Jesus.
Peace be with you …
Footnotes:
I’m reminded of Seneca’s famous quote: “To the one who does not know where they want to go, there is no favorable wind.”
In the West, we typically define sin (Greek hamartia) as “missing the mark,” the state of falling short of God’s perfection and holiness. While this is true—and it particularly appeals to the Western guilt-innocence worldview—it’s only one slice of a deeply rich and multi-faceted concept. Our unrighteousness and unholiness are more the outcome of sin than the mechanism of sin. We would do well to expand our “missing the mark” definition into “missing the way” and “missing what is sought or expected.” In other words, being a sinner means being separated from God.
It seems at first glance that Romans 6.6 teaches that our old self no longer exists, but we must look beyond this to see the complete picture. If the old identity ceased to exist, why would Paul instruct the believers in Colossae and Ephesus to put the old self off? It’s helpful to see the crucifixion of the old self as the removal of its power and authority over us.