What does God actually want us to become?

If God is transforming character, we need to know what the finished product looks like. What does God want us to become? The answer is not found primarily in a list. It is found in a Person: Jesus Christ. Paul says:

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.

That is the Christian standard. Not merely, “Be a better person.” But: “Let the mind of Christ be formed in you.” Paul describes the goal for the whole church in the same terms, that we may come “to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). The measure is not our neighbour, our church or our own earlier self. The measure is Christ.

Temperament, personality and character

If Christ is transforming our character, we should ask an important question: is Christ trying to erase the personality He gave us? No. The biblical picture is not the destruction of individuality, but the redemption of the person.

A useful distinction can help us here. Temperament describes many of our natural tendencies and emotional patterns. Personality is the broader combination of characteristics through which our individuality is expressed. Character concerns the moral direction of the person: the choices, motives, habits and responses that reveal what we are becoming.

These distinctions matter because a natural tendency is not the same thing as a moral virtue or a moral failure. A person may naturally be quiet or outspoken, cautious or adventurous, reflective or energetic. None of these characteristics, by itself, makes a person Christlike or un-Christlike. The Christian life is therefore not a programme of self-improvement. It is the work of God’s grace transforming a real person into the likeness of Christ while preserving the individuality God intended that person to possess.

So the question is not, “Why am I not like someone else?” The better question is: What is Christ doing with the person He created me to be? He does not ask the naturally quiet person to become naturally loud, nor the naturally outgoing person to become naturally quiet. He asks both to become loving. He does not require every believer to have the same temperament. He calls every believer to surrender that temperament to Him.

The Bible shows us this with real people. Jesus called twelve men who were not alike. Peter was impulsive: he stepped out of a boat onto the water and then sank, and in the garden he drew a sword and cut off a man’s ear (Matthew 14:28-31; John 18:10). James and John were given a name that fitted them: “Boanerges, that is, ‘Sons of Thunder’” (Mark 3:17). When a Samaritan village refused to receive Jesus, they asked:

Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did? But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”

The strength of those two men was real. What needed to be redeemed was the spirit in which they used it. Years later the same John wrote, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God” (1 John 4:7). Peter, who had drawn a sword, later wrote of Jesus that “when He was reviled, did not revile in return” (1 Peter 2:23). They did not become different men in temperament. They became different in character.

Moses gives us another picture. As a young man he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, looked around, and killed him (Exodus 2:11-12). Many years later Scripture says of him: “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3). The strong, decisive man of the desert had not been made into someone else. God had redirected what he had.

Christ does not need to make every believer identical. Peter was not John. John was not Paul. Moses was not David. Their personalities, abilities and circumstances differed. Yet God could work through each of them. What needed transformation was not their individuality, but the moral direction of their lives. The goal of Christian transformation is therefore not personality uniformity. It is Christlike character: love, humility, truth, purity, self-control, faithfulness, compassion, forgiveness, obedience and sacrificial service.

This is where character becomes visible. Do we use strength to serve or to dominate? Do we use intelligence to help or to manipulate? Do we use influence to lift others or to exalt ourselves? When we are hurt, do we seek revenge or practise forgiveness? When we are corrected, do we become defensive or teachable? The deeper question is what we do with what God has given us.

Look at Jesus

Look at the way Jesus treated people. He touched the untouchable. He listened to the rejected. He welcomed children. He showed compassion to the suffering. He forgave sinners. He confronted hypocrisy. He defended truth. He refused revenge. He served His disciples. He wept with those who mourned. He prayed for His enemies. And when He was falsely accused, He did not respond with hatred. His entire life revealed the character of God, as He Himself said: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). If we want to understand what God desires to reproduce in us, we must look at Christ.

The greatest example of selflessness

The clearest revelation of Christ’s character came at Calvary. Jesus had done nothing deserving death. Yet He willingly surrendered Himself for sinners. Paul writes:

And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

This is the opposite of selfishness. Sin says, “What can I get?” Christ says, “What can I give?” Sin says, “Protect yourself.” Christ says, “Give yourself.” Sin says, “Exalt yourself.” Christ humbled Himself. Paul describes it: “He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). That is the character of heaven, and it is the character that Christ wants to reproduce in His followers.