Do You Feel Like an Imposter?
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10
Do you feel like an imposter? A fraud? A fake?
Do you ever get the sense that people praise you to your face and cover your mistakes behind your back?
Do you feel like you’re barely holding it all together, putting on a brave face for the world, but one slip and everyone will discover you’re just being held together with paperclips and glue?
You’re not alone. Lots of people feel that way. But who can admit it without feeling like the whole house of cards will come crashing down?
And the hard part is, any negative encounter with another person seems to indicate you’re right. Like they can see right through you.
These feelings of inadequacy do come from a place of truth. We are sinners. We can’t do anything perfectly as perfectionist as we might be. Nothing we do is 100% perfect.
A little bit of pride, too, presents us with a paradox. You know you don’t do everything perfectly, but you don’t want it to seem that way. You want people to think you’re competent and adequate. You don’t want to open yourself up to criticism or disdain.
You and I need to be reminded we don’t need the façade we build for ourselves. Perfection is out of reach. We need grace.
Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.
Ephesians 2:4-9
It is God’s grace that saves us. We are not perfect. Paul says we’re born dead—“dead in your transgressions and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). Our attempts to cover our imperfections can only bring us worry that our coverings don’t cover enough.
We need grace. And grace God gives us. He has raised us from the dead. More than that he has “seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6). You can’t be an imposter because God has given you the identity that matters: his daughter or son.
His handiwork.
That’s what we’re called. In Christ Jesus, we are God’s handiwork, made new in his Son. Transformed. Called. And that which we’re supposed to do? Already prepared for us in advance.
So, God’s grace saves us. It refashions us. It confers a new status on us. It prepares our works for us. You can’t pretend to be what God has already truly made you.