The Name No One Else Can Give You (Refusing Labels)

Think about the last time you filled out a form. Name. Address. Occupation. Marital status.

We reduce ourselves to checkboxes and blanks, and somehow this is supposed to tell someone who we are.

Now think about the last time someone reduced you to a single word.

Maybe it was a word attached to your career, your past, your diagnosis, your political affiliation, or your worst moment. Maybe someone called you “a divorcee” or “the addict” or “the dropout.” Maybe the label was quieter than that, whispered behind closed doors or simply assumed. Maybe the most damaging label of all was one you pinned on yourself.

We live in a culture of relentless categorization. Some labels seem harmless enough: “runner,” “foodie,” “dog person.” Others cut deeper: “failure,” “offender,” “fraud.”

But whether the label feels light or heavy, every one of them shares the same dangerous presumption.

They all attempt to define a person, to compress the vast mystery of a human soul into a single, manageable word.

And when we accept that compression, something inside us begins to shrink to fit.

 

The Violence of the Label

Labeling is not a modern invention. The ancient world was ruthless in its taxonomy of human beings. In first-century Palestine, people were sorted with devastating efficiency: clean and unclean, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, sinner and righteous.

These were not casual descriptions. They were ontological verdicts.

They told you what you were, and by extension, what you could never become.

Consider the woman in Luke’s Gospel who appears at the home of Simon the Pharisee. Luke tells us simply that she was “a woman in the city, who was a sinner” (Luke 7:37, NRSV). Notice how the text mirrors the culture’s habit. She is not a woman who has sinned. She is a sinner. The label has become her essence. Simon sees her weeping at Jesus’ feet and thinks, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him” (Luke 7:39).

For Simon, the label is all there is to know. The word sinner is a locked door, and he has thrown away the key.

But Jesus does something extraordinary. He does not dispute the facts of her past. He does not pretend she has not done what she has done.

Instead, he refuses to let her past function as her identity.

He turns to Simon and tells a parable about two debtors, then says of the woman, “Her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love” (Luke 7:47). Jesus takes the very thing that defined her in Simon’s eyes and reframes it as the occasion for something beautiful. Her many sins have become the canvas on which extravagant love is now painted.

This is not mere social courtesy. It's more than a psychological "boost" to make the woman feel better about herself. This is a theological revolution.

 

Why Labels Lie

The reason we must refuse labels that claim to define us essentially is not simply that they are unkind.

It is that they are untrue.

A label freezes a person in time.

It takes a moment, a behavior, a condition, or a season and declares it to be the whole story.

But no human life is reducible to a single chapter.

More importantly, labels operate on the assumption that we are what we do, or what has been done to us, or what the world perceives us to be. This is a profound anthropological error. The Scriptures consistently locate human identity not in performance, not in reputation, and not in social category, but in relationship with God.

You are not, at the deepest level, your achievements. You are not your failures. You are not your diagnosis, your resume, your criminal record, or your social media profile.

The apostle Paul, a man who had once defined himself by his credentials (“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” [Philippians 3:5]), came to a staggering reassessment: “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:7-8).

Paul did not simply swap out one set of labels for another. He dismantled the entire system of self-definition by external markers.

His identity was no longer something he could construct or earn. It was something he received.

 

The Identity That Cannot Be Earned

So what is our true identity?

Scripture answers this question in a way that doesn't comport with our culture, or our human categories. The answer is always relational, always gift, always rooted in what God has done rather than in what we have done.

Paul writes to the Galatians: “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” (Galatians 3:28).

This is not a denial of difference. It is a denial that difference defines.

The categories that the ancient world treated as identity markers are here relativized by a deeper reality: union with Christ.

To the Corinthians, Paul writes: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The Greek word translated “new creation” is kainē ktisis, and kainos does not mean new in the sense of recent. It means new in the sense of qualitatively different, unprecedented, something that has never existed before.

Your identity in Christ is not a renovation of the old self. It is not the old self with better behavior.

It is something altogether new, a reality so fresh that the old categories simply cannot contain it.

The First Letter of John puts it in even simpler terms: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are” (1 John 3:1).

Notice the emphasis. Not “that is what we might become” or “that is what we are trying to be.” That is what we are.

The identity is present tense, already bestowed, already real.

And then John adds something remarkable: “What we will be has not yet been revealed” (1 John 3:2). In other words, even the name “children of God” does not exhaust the mystery of what we are becoming. Our truest identity is still unfolding, still hidden in God, still too vast for language.

What we already are in Christ is remarkable, of incalculable value and worth. What we are becoming is mysteriously, beautifully, even greater.

This is why every human label, no matter how accurate it may be as a description of behavior or circumstance, is ultimately a lie when it claims to be a definition of essence. No word we attach to a person can capture what God is doing in them. No verdict we render about ourselves or others can account for the new creation that is already underway.

 

The Name Written on the White Stone

In the book of Revelation, there is a mysterious promise: “To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it” (Revelation 2:17).

Scholars have debated the cultural background of this image, but its spiritual meaning is luminous.

God has a name for you that no one else knows. 

Not the name the world gave you. Not the name your failures gave you. Not the name your achievements gave you. A secret name, known only to you and to the One who gave it, a name that captures who you truly are in the depths of your being.

This means that the deepest truth about every person you meet is something you cannot see.

The person you are tempted to label, to categorize, to dismiss, is carrying a hidden name, a name spoken by God in the silence of their soul. And the deepest truth about you is likewise hidden from every critic, every accuser, every voice (including your own) that tries to tell you what you are.

 

Living Without Labels

What does this mean for daily life? It means at least three things.

First, refuse to define yourself by your worst moment. If you have failed, sinned, or fallen, that failure is something that happened. It is not who you are. Repentance is real. Grace is real. New creation is real. You are not the sum of your wreckage. If you still struggle with sin, it is not a defining characteristic. It is a battle you're fighting, but it isn't you.

Second, refuse to define yourself by your best moment. This is the subtler temptation. If your identity is built on your accomplishments, your virtue, or your reputation, you are building on sand. Most of this post/message has been about negative labels, but seemingly positive labels can be just as trapping. A straight-A student, the "good" son our daughter, the successful business person or (cough) the successful author.

The self that is constructed by success is just as fragile and just as false as the self that is constructed by failure. Both are built on performance. Neither is built on God.

When we build our "identity" on our accomplishments, even positive things, we run the risk of losing ourselves the moment we don't live up to our self-constructed identity perfectly. When you're pressured to define yourself as a straight-A student, what happens the next time you get a "B" on a test? If you define yourself as a successful entrepreneur, what's left of you if your business struggles or even fails? The problem with positive identity labels is that it places our entire sense of self-worth on a foundation that isn't guaranteed, that may very well fail.

Third, refuse to label others. When you look at another person, practice seeing them as God sees them: as a mystery still unfolding, a new creation still being revealed, a bearer of a name you do not yet know. This does not mean ignoring harmful behavior or pretending that actions have no consequences. It means declining to let any action, however grievous, become the final word about a human soul. It also means seeing someone as more than their accomplishments and successes. Only God speaks final words.

The next time you are tempted to reduce someone to a label, or to accept a label someone has placed on you, remember the woman weeping at the feet of Jesus. Simon called her a sinner. Jesus called her forgiven. Simon saw a category. Jesus saw a person. And in that seeing, everything changed.

Your truest name is not the one the world has given you. It's not even the label you might have slapped on yourself. It is the one written on the white stone, spoken in love, waiting to be fully known. Live from that name. It is the only one that will last.