Things are so crazy right now that no one is talking about the fact that the Department of Defense (DOD) has admitted to the existence of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The DOD prefers to call them unexplained aerial phenomena, but that will not change the public opinion that they are UFOs. The release of this information was said to have been done to clear up any misconceptions by the public as to whether the videos that were leaked in 2007 and 2017 were real. The videos were taken by fighter pilots, and they show round objects hovering in the sky or rotating through the air. The DOD did have a program investigating UFOs, but that investigation has been terminated as well as many strange ideas about the objects over the years. They are not admitting to any kind of origin for these objects or the presence of little green men.
Did you know that you can be both unrecognizable and identifiable at the same time? As Christians, we can be in both of these categories. We are to be dead to the old man of sin, “knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin” (Rom. 6:6). If the old man is dead, then we are fundamentally different to the point that our old friends still living in our old ways no longer know us. “In all this, they are surprised that you do not run with them into the same excesses of dissipation, and they malign you” (1 Pet. 4:4). They would say, “We don’t even know you anymore!” You are unrecognizable to them.
In dying to the old man, we are raised to walk in a new life. “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). When we do this, we “put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Eph. 4:24). Now we are known by God and His Son, and we have a relationship with Him. We pass from one state of being to another. “So then, you will know them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter” (Matt. 7:20-21).
How we live and conduct our lives determines how we are known. “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). We are now identifiable as belonging in the kingdom and not walking in darkness. It does not matter what others say we are or what they will admit about us. It only matters what He will say about us.