On front page of one of our nation’s leading newspapers this past week were two articles, one praising someone for being transgender, and another scolding someone else for being transracial.

For some reason right now it’s okay to pretend you are someone of a different gender, but not okay to pretend that you are someone of a different race. It’s okay to artificially make yourself look like a woman, but not okay to artificially make yourself look like an African American.

These identify crises are bizarre in one sense, but at the same time we shouldn’t be surprised. Everyone needs an identity, and everyone has to face their flawed identity and the desire to be remade. In his letter to church in Ephesus, Paul says we are all by nature children of wrath. Every individual in the human race is born fallen, sinful, sinning, and under the judgment of God. This is not an identity of confidence and security.

We all need to be transformed, to be remade and renewed in every way, to take part of what Jesus calls the regeneration. He told one teacher in Israel, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn. 3:3). Regeneration is the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. Bruce Jenner and Rachel Dolezal are not wrong to seek a new identity, but they’re not going to find it with surgery and skin color.

God the Father offers us a new birth, a new heart, a new hope through a new and living way directly into the His presence through the blood of Christ. Without this renewal we are stuck with our own manufactured ones that only make us more broken and confused.

But the way out is simple. The good news that Jesus died for our sin, rose from the dead on the third day according the Scriptures in order to give us new life and transform the world is plain. Christ died and rose. That offer was made with power 2000 years ago and continues today as you are invited to repent of your sin and believe in Jesus, that times of refreshing—fulfillment, peace, joy, acceptance, confidence, love—would come to you from your Lord and God.

The Gospel is simple good news, and it is the power unto salvation. Receive and rest in it, and take it out in humble confidence to a world in need of a new identity.