Michael-Grams: M-G: 2.10.20 // Fingerprints of Faith

Take your two hands and flip them over and look at your fingerprints under some bright lighting! Like it or not, this is your biometric identification from birth. All of those never-changing ridges on your fingerprints form three basic patterns called loops, whorls, and arches. What is amazing is that our fingerprints are totally unique, and that theory is yet to be disproven; in other words, no two people have been found to share the same fingerprints, not even among twins. The chance that your fingerprints will match up with someone else is about 1 in 64 billion.1

Since there are over 7 billion people on the face of the earth, those are some pretty good odds that you and I are unique as far as our fingerprints go. Someone asked the question if our thumbprints were the same? That would be a thumbs-down answer,

“No, the thumbprints on the left and right hand are not identical. Even if they are the same type of fingerprint (loop, arch, or whorl) and they look the same, they are not exactly the same. Fingerprints are partially genetically determined and partially determined as the fetus develops, although the exact mechanism for fingerprint formation is not completely understood. If fingerprints were completely determined by genetics, the left and right thumbprints might be identical, but because other factors are involved, every fingerprint turns out differently….”2

Imagine that! You may look like the next guy or girl; you may share a similar personality type with others; you may even have a twin; and you may have scores of cousins to where the double helix of your DNA merges into a single strand (if that’s possible, not!), but when it comes to your fingerprints, you and I are distinct from the other billions of homo sapiens found only on terra firma. Our fingerprints indicate that you and I are special, indeed, though our uniqueness may go vastly underappreciated! Do you feel the burn, too?

The Bible does not say why God gave us different fingerprints. We can hypothesize, but that is all it would amount to is an educated guess. The How Stuff Works article claimed that Babylonians recorded business transactions by pressing their fingertips into clay, and the Chinese-made fingerprint impressions were done with ink on paper for business transactions and for identifying their children.3 Rather than talking about the history of fingerprints and forensics, we will talk about our fingerprints in a different kind of way than the normal talk of the town.

I am going to conjecture that if God knows the number of hairs on our head (Lk 12:7), calls the billions of stars in the universe by name (Psa 147:4), or allows no sparrow to fall to the ground apart from His will (Mt 10:29), then it stands to reason, if theological logic is any measurement, that Yahweh knows the precise pattern of every fingerprint since the Garden! I believe this to be true because one of Yahweh’s eternal perfections is omniscience or all-knowing, yes? He is not evolving in His knowledge base because He knows the past, present, and future.

Let’s throw Christlikeness or being like Christ into the mix of our discussion on fingerprints. It is easily understood why fingerprints are “handy” for identification purposes given their uniqueness; a fingerprint can only be associated with one person.

When it comes to Christlikeness as pertaining to believers, though we are unique, we really all need to shoot for being the same in Christ! We do not need to offer arguments on why every believer should be like Christ; allow me to extend a few references for reflection: Psa 17:15; Prov 3:5-6; Mt 5:48; Lk 6:40; Jn 13:13-17; Jn 14:15; 15:12; 17:19, 22-23, 26; Rom 6:4; 8:9, 29; 12:1-2; 13:14; 1 Cor 11:1; 15:49; 2 Cor 3:18; 5:17; Gal 2:20; 3:27; 5:16, 22-23; Eph 1:4; 4:11-13, 15, 22-24; 5:1-2; Php 2:5-8, 13; 3:10-11, 21; Col 1:10; 3:1-3, 10; Heb 12:2; 1 Jn 1:7; 2:6, 29; 3:2-3, 7, 18; 2 Pet 1:4-9; 2:22; 2 Pet 3:18, et cetera.

Moving on, let me introduce you to my theological theory on fingerprints and being like Christ. It’s okay to have mentors in life as long as they are biblical in person, principle, and purpose, but spiritually speaking, the only Person we are expected to be like is Jesus Christ, not like anyone else, and the reason I say that is because of our one of a kind fingerprints.

I am of the opinion that Yahweh wants us to show forth Jesus Christ in us through our uniqueness, which our fingerprints represent. In other words, there is no one like us on the earth, and we as believers are to glorify Yahweh through our individual personalities so that others may see Christ in us. Understand this; when we know and do God’s will according to His Word, Yahweh will be glorified; there’s no other way to glorify Him apart from being in agreement with His Word!

This is revolutionary but not heretical. It is our sin nature we are to put down, to deny our sinful, fleshly impulses, not our personality. Why deprive the world of our uniqueness and the richness of who we are in Christ? There is a vast difference between promoting Christ through our humanness in harmony with the Word, though sinful we may be, and advocating the ideology of secular humanism that focuses on self-realization and the rejection of Christ and His teachings.

In the process of progressive sanctification, we are gaining our true humanity back the more we become like Christ by maturing in the faith. Though we will never achieve sinless perfection on this side of eternity, we can purposely pursue being more like Christ day after day until He comes for us (cf. 1 Jn 3:2-3). Once we are literally glorified, that rattlesnake we call our sin nature will be removed once and for all, for all eternity, but until then, we, through our individual personalities subject to the Word, are to present Christ to the world, the hope of glory, to a people having no hope and without God in the world (Eph 2:12).

I wanted to say to every believer who reads this; you are special in Christ, and of great value to Him because He loves you. Jesus demonstrated His love in that while you and I were yet sinners, He died for us (Rom 5:8)! Within the heart of every born again believer, the Holy Spirit indwells and is “the guarantor of eternal redemption in Christ for those who believe in Him”4 (Eph 1:13; 4:30; 2 Cor 1:21-22). Such a response to the love (agape) of God demands nothing short of total commitment to Him on our part (Rom 12:1-2).

We are saved! We are being saved! And we will be saved! Glory to God! Whatever God has called for you and me to do, we must put our fingerprints of faith all over it for His glory and His alone! Wouldn’t it be a glorious sight if people mistook us for Jesus! Be yourself in Christ. <><