"Who am I?"

Verse: Romans 8:1-8
"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to b a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do no live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.
Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God."

If you take the time to recall Paul's message from the previous chapter in Romans, you might get lost or remember Paul's conveyance of his inability to do what is good. For without Christ, Paul is unable to do anything of immortal significance. Without Christ, Paul is left to live a life that can only end with a mortal thump into being nothing. However, with Christ, he is transformed into living beyond himself.
Notice that Paul rapidly gets tongue-tied and lost when he recounts his identity that endlessly ends with him doing everything that he does not desire? See his tumultuous tumble from trying to do what is right and then turning back to living his life the same old way? And then, in the sweet outcry of chapter eight, Paul drops the weight of being a failure and exclaims something new.
It was like Paul was pacing a room looking for a solution and kept making the same mathematical error when he tried to add all of his goodness up, and he kept coming up with a negative number instead of a positive summary of his added goodness. Then, someone told him that his equation started with the wrong principles and handed him a few notes to correct his previous numerical quandary. Paul tried to add up himself once more with the new equation and suddenly for the first time, he had a surplus! Dumbfounded and excited, Paul clenched his gut because the new result made everything possible.
The moment beginning in the eighth chapter concludes that everything must always add Christ if it's going to be eternal. This isn't something that you add to your mom's best pie to make it last forever. No, this is something that can't just be added. It is a whole new way of doing math, and just as a note, I almost always failed math in school, so I like to get rid of math that just leaves me lost. But thanks to Paul's logic, I can add up what he's trying to say.
Life with Christ begins with a total flood at the beginnings of faith. It's a life completely absorbed and then transformed through the Spirit of Christ into something that leaves you and I identified with Christ. It's not only adding on a new name, it is an living as that new name: Christ.
Like Paul, when we try to survey, weigh, or figure ourselves out by the almighty question, "Who am I?", we will probably end up pulling an all-nighter like Paul. Left only to find that we just do not add up to what we were hoping for. The questions usually come after we've messed up. Something was done that just didn't match our plan or idea for 'who' we thought we were. Perhaps, it's that lingering loss created from your girlfriend telling you that you are not enough for her. Or, your parents don't understand how you got to be the mess that you seem to be these days. Or, you just don't know where you fit into the world, your school, your church, your friends, or yourself. The list for all our failures could drag on and on like Paul's confusing statements about doing everything that he didn't want to do. And, the questions turn into something so heavy that you could feel them pressing down upon each breath and step taken. The questions become everything. The questions start to feel like rocks in your hands that keep you from living like you want to. Rocks in your hands get in the way.
But then, someone or something, perhaps the Spirit like in chapter eight gives you full permission to drop those rocks. Better, a place to rest those questions, those rocks are put somewhere familiar but new. As those baptized, we can comeback to where our faith started. Our faith produces lots of questions, and always gives us a place to lay those rocks when the questions get too heavy for us. That place is united by the same Spirit we received at baptism. In our baptism, we were submerged into a new identity. We entered into a new life with God that lives out an identity of hope and forgiveness. Yahweh, the "I am" of the Testaments includes us to find our "I am" in the "I am" of Christ. In baptism, we are to always be washed of our temporary hangups, misguided actions, losses, questions, rocks(which can feel like forever at many times) and drop them into the waters of baptism. In baptism, we begin our equation with Christ. Who I am is who Christ is as the Spirit lives in me.
In baptism, I begin to live in faith that always begins and welcomes me back to finding who God is calling and creating me to be in the Word. It is through baptism that all are invited to live a new equation and identity in who Christ was and continues to be as the Spirit calls us to live in the Water of Baptism and the Word of God.
So, drop those rocks and remember your baptism. Go ahead and dive into the Word and see that the "I am" is more than part of who you are.
Cross references for Romans 8:2:
Ro 3:27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith.
Joh 8:36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Ro 8:10 But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.
Ro 8:11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.
Joh 4:10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
Joh 4:14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Joh 6:63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.
Joh 7:38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”
Joh 7:39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
1Co 15:45 So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.
2Co 3:6 He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant-- not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Re 11:11 But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them.
Re 22:1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb
Ro 6:18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
Ro 6:22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
Ps 51:12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
Joh 8:32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
2Co 3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
Ga 2:19 For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God.
Ga 5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
Ro 5:21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Ro 7:21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
Ro 7:24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Ro 7:25 Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.