The Woman Who Left Her Name Behind

In 1843, a former slave named Isabella Baumfree walked away from New York City carrying little more than a pillowcase of belongings and a name no one had heard before. She told her friends she was no longer Isabella. The Almighty had given her work to do, and she would be called Sojourner Truth — a traveler whose sole purpose was to speak what God had laid on her heart.

She had been someone's property. She had been sold at auction as a child, separated from her parents, beaten by enslavers who never saw her as fully human. But when she encountered the living Christ, every label the world had forced on her fell away. She belonged to God now, and that belonging gave her a new name, a new mission, and a voice that would shake the conscience of a nation.

Paul opens his letter to the Romans with that same reorientation. He does not introduce himself by his impressive credentials — trained Pharisee, Roman citizen, student of Gamaliel. Instead: "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God." His identity was rewritten by his calling.

This is what Romans 1 declares over every believer. You are not defined by your past, your failures, or the labels others have pinned to you. You are, as Paul writes, "called to belong to Jesus Christ... called to be saints." Your deepest identity is not what you were. It is Whose you are.