Louie Giglio encourages students to see their new identity in Christ

During Wednesday morning’s Convocation, Louie Giglio, pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta, Ga., told students that they should rest in knowing they are justified and redeemed by their faith in Christ rather than always view themselves as sinners who have fallen short.

Giglio is the visionary architect and director of the Passion Movement — a Christian organization comprised of Passion Conferences, Passion City Church, Passion Publishing, and sixstepsrecords — and the founder of Passion Institute.

Giglio said Liberty is one of the highest-represented schools at Passion Conferences, out of the 1,643 colleges and universities represented. (The next Passion Conference will be Jan. 1-3 in Arlington, Texas; Liberty students can receive $30 off their tickets using the code “Liberty.”)

Giglio told a bit of his own story and how his college years were some of the “most intimate seasons” of his relationship with Jesus. He said that in a time when there were no podcasts and no social media, believers depended upon preachers traveling to their churches. He recalled a time when Liberty founder Dr. Jerry Falwell spoke at a church he attended one week and how Falwell was intentional with every person he met.

“Jerry Falwell would lock onto somebody; he never took his eyes off of them, and he just listened intently to every word they said, and he remembered their name,” Giglio said. “That’s the kind of person you want to become.”

With preachers like Falwell to model after, Giglio said he knew he wanted to devote his life to preaching and serving Jesus, but there was a key aspect of being a follower in Jesus that he was missing. To show what his mindset was at the time, he quoted Romans 3:23, which states that all have fallen short of the glory of God.

“I love Jesus, I was walking with Jesus, I was intimate with Jesus, and I knew there was a calling on my life to preach the Gospel, but my mindset was (that) I’m just a sinner saved by grace,” he said. “And a lot of it was rooted in this verse, which was very much ingrained in my life. And it’s 100% true, this verse.”

Giglio explained that when Adam and Eve sinned, they became “spiritually dead” and were required to leave the Garden of Eden.

“Spiritually, they died because the wages of sin is death,” he said. “The Gospel (message) is not that sin makes you bad; it’s worse than that. The Gospel is that sin makes you dead. So, the story of our faith isn’t, ‘Man, I’m a bad person because of sin, and I’ve got to try to become a better person.’ No, the story of our faith is sin makes you spiritually dead, and dead people can’t do anything to help themselves.”

He showed a lithograph of Adam and Eve, where Adam is looking back on Eden. Giglio said everybody in the world is looking back on Eden as well. He added that many people believe their good works will outweigh their sins and grant them salvation, but he said that is not the Gospel.

“Everybody knows they came from the Creator and that they remain in the image of Almighty God, and they’re not going to be satisfied until they find Him,” he said.

Similar to the story of an Olympic rifle athlete who accidentally shot a wrong target, he said many people are shooting for the wrong objective. They are “doing” with no understanding of the “why” behind what they are doing, he explained.

Based on Romans 3:21-22, Giglio said righteousness is given, not earned, through faith in Jesus. He told the students that while many stop reading at Romans 3:23, there is not a period at the end of the verse, there is a comma, and they must read on to verse 24 to discover what their new identity is.

“Jesus came from His throne to bring dead people back to life again, and when He brought them back to life again through spiritual birth, He gave them a brand-new identity,” Giglio said. “So, I was a sinner, and I was saved by grace, but now I’m justified by His grace through the redemption that is Christ Jesus.”

Giglio said it’s Christ’s righteousness that then causes us to leave our old ways behind us, to champion right instead of wrong, and if people try to use solely good works to get in right standing with God, they will never become closer to the standard of righteousness through Jesus.

“When you put your faith in Jesus, you are changed, and your new identity is the righteousness of God,” he said. “Christ has done everything to make us acceptable to God, and you have a new identity today, and it is that you are justified.”