Matters of personal identity loom large in today’s culture. Yet elements of identity that once seemed stable, like gender, are often seen today as products of self-construction. These elements, which might also include sexuality and definitions of family, create a fluidity of self-identity that seems to leave no solid ground, no stable place.

Many Christians find that this sort of shifting ground wreaks havoc on traditional notions of what it means to be male and female, but Paul offers a destabilizing theological equivalent in the New Testament when he writes that “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Paul states that our primary identities are no longer gender, ethnicity or social status, but that the supposedly stable characteristics of our personhood have been subsumed “in Christ Jesus.”

The language of being “in Christ,” which reflects a mystical incorporation into Christ’s body, reflects Paul’s own experience of the risen Lord, when all of his most cherished personal identity markers—“circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee” (Phil 3:5)—came to be seen by him as rubbish. The spiritual and mystical components of being “in Christ” transcend all of our human identity markers. When grounded in the mystical body of Christ, our defining characteristics become secondary to our primary identity as Christians.

Entry into the church is for Paul entry into a new family, since “in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.” Being “in Christ” is incorporation into a new family, in which every gender, ethnicity and social status is welcome; but “child of God” transcends every other identity marker. Paul says, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” What Abraham, the father of nations, received was a promise for all people to be incorporated into the family of God, regardless of who you were or who you are.

Baptism is the entry point into the new family of God, and Paul says that “as many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” So what does it mean to clothe oneself in Christ? For ages, people have taken clothing as a primary means of self-identity and self-expression, just as we do today. Numerous beauty and fashion bloggers people YouTube, and millions of viewers subscribe for advice on fashion, makeup and lifestyle. Clothing speaks to identity, from Brooklyn hipsters to overworked mothers on the go.

But the clothing we put on in baptism is the start of a transformation and the beginning of a new identity that supersedes our particular modes of identification. The baptismal garment identifies us not with a tribe but with the anti-tribe, the church, and calls into question our categories of identification. The white robe signals that whatever family you came from before, whatever sort of male or female identification might have troubled others, whatever your status— from Wall Street trader to low-paid fruit-picker—there is a new place of belonging “in Christ” that transcends all of it.

In our incorporation into the body of Christ, there is something significant not about how we define ourselves but about how God defines us as members of God’s family, beyond the human categories by which we draw meaning. Our identities, beyond that of beloved child, do not matter to God. This does not mean that we do not stand against sexism, racism and all forms of oppression because we live in societies that judge people by gender, race and even how they dress. But in God’s family, we are called to transcend the categories and ground our identity on the solid rock of Christ, our brother.

This article appears in June 6-13 2016.

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.