Brokenness Is Not Identity: Reclaiming a Christian Doctrine of the Person

Rob Jackson

A foundational essay articulating a Christian doctrine of the person—clarifying the difference between brokenness, sin, and identity, and why healing must be rooted in union with Christ.

In recent years, it has seemed to me that we have quietly copied and pasted psychology over theology. In doing so, we have become far more interested in the broken person than the sinful person. This is not because people are not broken—they are—but because we have subtly shifted the categories by which we understand what it means to be human.

This shift has consequences.

Many people today understand themselves primarily through the language of experience: trauma, desire, anxiety, orientation, diagnosis, or woundedness. These experiences are real, often painful, and deserve careful attention. But when experience becomes identity, something essential is lost. Healing becomes confused with salvation, and brokenness begins to function as a moral category.

Scripture offers a more honest—and ultimately more hopeful—account of the human person.

Three Layers of Sin—and Why They Matter

A Christian understanding of the person must hold together three realities that are often collapsed or confused.

First, there is original sin. We are not born morally neutral. We enter the world with a fallen nature, inclined away from God. This is not a popular truth, but it is a necessary one. Without it, the gospel loses its coherence, and redemption becomes unintelligible.

Second, there are the sins committed against us. From our earliest years, we are vulnerable and dependent. Others act upon us—sometimes carelessly, sometimes maliciously. Abuse, neglect, betrayal, and harm leave real wounds. A theology that cannot acknowledge this fails to account for much of human suffering and risks silencing those who have been genuinely harmed.

Third, there are our own sins—the ways we react to life in the flesh rather than respond in the Spirit. These reactions may be understandable and conditioned by history, but they are never morally neutral. In Christ, we are not reduced to victims, nor are we left as prisoners of our past. We remain responsible persons—not autonomous, but accountable—capable of repentance and transformation when we actively yield our will and attention to the correction (re-ordering), nurture, and resurrection power of the Holy Spirit already at work within us.

When these three realities are not held together, distortion follows. If we focus only on sin, we risk crushing the wounded. If we focus only on wounds, we evacuate moral agency. Either way, we fail to tell the truth about the human condition.

When Brokenness Becomes Righteousness

One of the most troubling developments in contemporary Christian language is the unspoken assumption that greater brokenness implies greater righteousness. Suffering is elevated not merely as a reality to be endured, but as a badge of moral authority. The ability to articulate pain becomes proof of virtue.

This is a serious theological error.

Scripture never treats brokenness as righteousness. It treats it as the context in which grace is revealed. Affliction may be used by God, but it does not justify us. Suffering may deepen us, but it does not define us. Identity rooted in brokenness cannot withstand life, because suffering—by definition—changes.

Identity must be more stable than experience.

Identity That Cannot Be Taken Away

When painful or unjust things happen—and they will—our identity cannot depend on remaining unbroken. If identity rests on wellness, clarity, or healing, it will collapse under pressure. But if identity rests on something deeper, it can endure even profound loss.

The Christian claim is not that believers are no longer broken, but that their identity is no longer located in brokenness. In Christ, identity remains secure even when life breaks us.

This distinction matters deeply, especially for those who suffer.

Identity as Union, Not Category

To speak of identity in Christ is not to offer a religious label or an alternative category among many. It is to speak of union with the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Union with Christ is not merely metaphorical. It is ontological. We live and move and have our being in Him. Through Christ, we are brought into participation with the life of God Himself. This union transcends sexuality, gender, race, performance, temperament, trauma history, and social location. None of these disappear, but none of them define who we are.

Identity, in this sense, is not constructed or discovered inwardly. It is received. It is grounded not in self-expression, but in divine action.

This is why identity cannot be reduced to desire. Desire fluctuates. Identity abides.

Healing Is Not the Center

In therapeutic culture, healing is often treated as the highest good. Healing is a genuine gift, but it is not the foundation of the Christian life. Healing is episodic; identity must be stable.

If identity is found in healing, what happens when healing is slow, partial, or absent? Many faithful people live with chronic conditions, persistent temptations, or enduring weaknesses. Are they therefore less whole? Less Christian? Less themselves?

The gospel answers no.

Peace with God precedes peace with self. Peace with self often precedes peace with others. But peace is not something we manufacture. It is something we receive through communion with God.

The Holy Spirit: Source, Not Self-Production

Much confusion arises when transformation is framed as self-production. We begin to believe that if we think correctly, try harder, or apply the right tools, we will become whole. This approach quietly replaces dependence with effort and shifts the burden of change onto the self.

The New Testament offers a different vision.

The fruit of the Spirit is not produced by human willpower. We cannot generate love, joy, peace, or self-control. These are not achievements. They are gifts. The Holy Spirit is not an aid to human effort; He is the source of new life and transformation.

Our role is not to manufacture change, but to receive, yield, and cooperate. We do not generate transformation; we become conduits through which the Spirit’s life flows as we remain united to Christ. The power is His. The life is His. The change is His work in us.

This is not passivity. It is participation.

Implications for Pastoral and Clinical Care

A whole-person approach must honor spirit, mind, body, and relationships without collapsing them into one another. Not every problem is spiritual, but no problem is merely psychological. Care may require pastors, counselors, physicians, mentors, and community. None replaces the others.

But all care must be grounded in a clear doctrine of the person.

Without it, we either spiritualize suffering or psychologize sin. Both leave people exhausted and disoriented.

Conclusion

We live in a moment of deep confusion about identity. The language of self has expanded while the substance of self has thinned. The Christian tradition offers something sturdier: an identity rooted not in feeling, but in union; not in brokenness, but in Christ.

Brokenness is real. Healing is good. But neither is who we are.

In Christ, our identity is secure—even when we are not.