If you are who you are, then who are you?

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Chances are, your parents tried to teach you that if you “hang around the wrong friends,” they would get you into trouble.

The Bible has a similar message in 1 Corinthians 15:33, “Don’t be fooled by those who say such things, for ‘bad company corrupts good character.’”

Nevertheless, it’s easy to find ourselves lulled into “bad company,” kind of like the story about a scorpion who needed to get across a river but had no way of doing so. But then along came a frog and, just as it was about to hop into the river to cross to the other side, the scorpion said to the frog, “Hey, give me ride across the river.”

“No,” replied the frog, “you’re a scorpion and you’ll just sting me.”

“If I did that,” replied the scorpion, “we would both drown. Why would I do that?”

The frog thought for a moment and then said, “Okay, I’ll give you a ride.”

The scorpion jumped onto the back of the frog. But, sure enough, when the creatures were about halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog.

“Why did you do that?!” asked the frog. “Now we’re both drowning!”

“Hey, I’m a scorpion, stinging others is just my nature. What did you expect?” replied the scorpion.

The scorpion’s response was that he was what he was … a scorpion! Stinging people is what he does, and to expect anything else wouldn’t be rational.

We are who we are.

Unredeemed and separated from God, we’re spiritually dead people who exist experiencing the sting of sin. That’s who we are, and all we can be without Jesus Christ. But through the redemption made available to us through Him, we are alive in Christ and reconciled to God …

“My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me,” Galatians 2:20.

In Christ, that sting of sin and death have been defeated! We are no longer who we used to be because Jesus now lives in us!

So the important question to ask yourself is this: if we are who we are, who are you?

Scotty