Any context other than Christ creates a crippled identity.

This is a principle thing that is marked in the gospel—how people were described before their encounters with Christ. The woman with the issue of blood. Blind Bartimeus. The man blind from birth. The woman caught in adultery. The cripple man at the pool of Bethesda… Each person was defined by what had happened to them and how they moved in the world—and their perception of it was ruled by that pain.

Christ redefines you—He restores you back to God’s image of the self you ought to be, the one God foreknew. Sin nature’s very enmity is against the image of God IN you. This is the renewing of the mind found in Romans 12, wherewith we first must present our self as living sacrifices—that is, are we willing to lay ourselves fully into the hands of Christ to be re-presented to ourselves wholly and acceptable unto God as who He made us to be in His image.