How To Grow A Christlike Personality

Jesus Christ doesn’t need to change, because he is sinless and lived his life on Earth without sin. So Jesus is the exception. The only exception! Everyone else, you and me included, does need to change if we want to grow more like Christ.

Why? Because over time, we form personality patterns as a way of coping with fear. Someone who blames and attacks, arguing to handle problems, fears trusting others, fearing they will take advantage of him. 

Regardless of why we formed these patterns, however, each of us is responsible for our own behavior. We each need to acknowledge that one or more patterns  hamper our relationships with others and our own growth as a human being. 

Self Compass Personality Patterns Chart

 

The Personality Patterns Chart above shows how manipulative strategies keep each personality pattern intact, unless you surrender to the path of growth offered by transforming your personality in Christ. 

• The Dependent Pleaser and Histrionic Storyteller are stuck with too much Love on the Self Compass. 
• The Paranoid Arguer and Antisocial Rule-breaker are stuck with too much Assertion. 
• The Avoidant Worrier and Schizoid Loner are stuck with too much Weakness.
• The Narcissistic Boaster and Compulsive Controller are stuck with too much Strength.

If you’re interested in finding out which patterns you overly rely on, try out the informal personality inventory in The Self Compass:Charting Your Personality in Christ.

Your score levels may indicate you have some personal and interpersonal difficulties that can be traced to this pattern. Taking the growth stretches sprinkled throughout the book or considering counseling will assist your growth.

As you monitor your progress over several months, eventually these action steps will lead to the healthy integration of this compass point into your life and personality. You will appreciate the freedom for creative living that arises from personality wholeness.

It’s common to have a mixture of personality patterns, even ones that seem to contradict each other, like the Pleaser pattern in certain situations and the Arguer pattern in others. As you read about each pattern, you proceed by targeting the highest score for concentrated prayer and growth stretches. When you begin to make discernible progress, shift your attention to the next pattern and work on it. 

Eventually, your Self Compass will break free from the patterns that imprison you. The outcome of this change, sometimes dramatic and other times subtle, is increasing serenity, improved relationships, and deepening trust in yourself and God.

Deepening Trust In God

You will also gain a kind of x-ray vision into the true motives of other people’s behavior. With this comes the ability to resist manipulation that would otherwise cause you harm, for as Jesus counsels, we all need to grow “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Mt 10:16).

The principles you learn will enrich and heal your relationships in single or married life. If you are raising children, the Self Compass is a trustworthy guide to helping them form healthy and balanced personalities. This is called the actualizing process—the shift from living through manipulative patterns toward Christ-like personality wholeness. 

What? A Personality Pattern is a Sin?

On a murky planet in a galaxy far away, Jedi Master Yoda is training Luke Skywalker to become a Jedi knight. In the Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back, Luke is learning how to become a force for good in a world dominated by an evil emperor and his hatchet man, Darth Vader. When Luke whines and complains that the training is too hard, Yoda replies that it is Luke’s impatient attitude and quickness to give up that are holding him back. Yoda tells Luke that the dark side is “easier and more seductive.” The Bible confirms this truth that “the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it” (Matthew 7:13).

Luke is stuck in the Avoidant Worrier personality pattern, blaming Yoda for what he is dodging. It is his pattern of complaining and sulking that prevents him from sticking with the training. He attempts to manipulate Yoda by pouting to let himself off the hook. “It’s too hard,” is one of the standard ploys of someone stuck in the Worrier pattern. Luke is trying to avoid growth. He expects Yoda to reject him. Yoda confirms his expectations by getting fed up and critical of him. 

"It's too hard."

Every one of us sins like this, stuck in some form of manipulative personality pattern, whether we’re willing to admit it or not. The apostle John challenges every living person with the words, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). The sin of manipulation causes you to relate to God and others in a way that seems right to you, but backfires in the long run. Sin’s effects are described in Scripture as the crooked path: “Those whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways” (Proverbs 2:15).

Self-will, the root of sin, says, “I’ve always been this way and don’t intend to change. I don’t need forgiveness because I haven’t done that much wrong. I certainly don’t need a Savior to change me.” There are two problems with this position: 

1. You are blind to your self-centeredness.
2. You think God’s solution for sin and evil is not necessary, because your good intentions and will power are enough.

REDEMPTION AS THE CURE FOR SIN

To what degree are you free to become what God intends, and to what degree are you held responsible for your attitudes and behavior? Luke Skywalker is responsible for the attitudes inherent in his Worrier pattern: passive aggressively blaming Yoda for what he is unwilling to face in himself. Were someone like Luke to acknowledge his blame-shifting and ask for God’s help, he could find himself on the road to more responsible behavior. While sin pervades human nature, the situation is far from hopeless, for “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20).

In an act of infinite love, God solved the sin problem by the offering of Christ’s death in the place of all people. “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Christ’s atonement for sin is an objective, transcendent act of God that exists beyond the realm of human manipulation. And Christ’s resurrection is God’s promise made real that you are offered Christ-like wholeness when you surrender to God’s sovereign power.  

Jesus Christ's Resurrection

People can appropriate new life in Christ anytime, anywhere. “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). Surrender to Christ allows you to say and mean: “I bear true guilt for wrong attitudes and behaviors—some of which I’m aware and some I’m not. I confess my need for God’s forgiveness and help. I ask to receive the righteousness of Christ.”

Accepting Christ into your heart does not mean you don’t sin any more—rather, it means you can freely discuss your sins with God, inviting his help and wisdom for gradual growth that occurs over your lifetime. Alister McGrath points out, “Forgiveness does not necessarily mean that sin is eliminated—it means that the threat sin poses to man’s relationship to God is eliminated. There is all the difference in the world between being sinless and being forgiven.”

For more, see:

THE SELF COMPASS:

CHARTING YOUR PERSONALITY IN CHRIST