What Kind of Person Are You Becoming?

We spend a great deal of time thinking about what we want from life. We think about the education we need, the career we want, the money we hope to make, the kind of home we would like to have, the relationships we want, and the things we would like to accomplish before our lives are over. These are reasonable things to think about. A person needs goals, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to make good use of the life he has been given. But there is another question that can easily disappear beneath all our plans: What kind of person am I becoming while I am pursuing all these things?

That question is more important than it may first appear. A person can achieve many of the things he once wanted and discover that the pursuit has changed him in ways he never intended. He can become successful and increasingly impatient, wealthy and increasingly selfish, knowledgeable and increasingly proud, respected and increasingly difficult to correct. He can build a life that looks impressive from the outside while becoming someone he would not have wanted to become when he first started. Achievement tells us something about what a person has accomplished, but it does not necessarily tell us what that accomplishment has done to the person.

This is why there are times when we need to stop asking only, “What am I achieving?” and ask a deeper question: “What are my choices making me?”

We Are Being Shaped Every Day

None of us remains exactly the same as the years pass. Our experiences affect us, our relationships affect us, and the decisions we repeatedly make affect us. A person who continually chooses honesty becomes increasingly comfortable with the truth, while someone who repeatedly lies may eventually find deception easier than honesty. A person who continually gives in to anger may become more easily controlled by anger, while someone who deliberately practices patience may become more capable of responding calmly under pressure. The same principle applies to generosity, selfishness, humility, pride, discipline, laziness, kindness, bitterness, forgiveness, and many other qualities that eventually become visible in a person's character.

One decision may seem insignificant when we make it, but repeated decisions create patterns, and patterns can become part of who we are. This is why our habits deserve more attention than we sometimes give them. We are not simply deciding what to do today; in many ways, we are participating in the formation of the person we will become tomorrow.

That means a useful question to ask about any repeated behavior is not only, “Is this wrong?” but also, “What is this doing to me?” A habit may seem harmless because its consequences are not immediate, yet it may be quietly shaping our desires, our reactions, and our character. Likewise, a good decision may seem small because nobody notices it, but repeated choices toward truth, discipline, kindness, and integrity can gradually produce a person who is different from the person he would have become otherwise.

We Can Become Good at Looking Good

One difficulty is that the person we present to others is not always the person we are becoming within.

Human beings are remarkably capable of managing appearances. We know how to behave in public, what to say around certain people, and which parts of our lives to reveal. We can learn how to appear confident when we are afraid, generous when we are selfish, calm when we are angry, and strong when we are struggling. In a world where so much of life can be presented through carefully selected images and words, it is even easier to create an appearance that does not tell the whole story.

But there is a difference between looking good and being good.

A person can speak kindly in public and be cruel to the people closest to him. Someone can be admired for integrity while secretly living dishonestly. A person can appear generous while giving only when others are watching. Someone can know exactly what everybody else should do while refusing to examine his own life. We can become so accustomed to managing our appearance that we stop asking what is actually happening within us.

The Bible gives us a sobering reason to take this seriously. When Samuel was looking at the sons of Jesse and judging by what he could see, God told him, “Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

That does not mean our outward actions are unimportant. They matter greatly. But Scripture reminds us that God sees something deeper than our public presentation. He sees the motives, desires, attitudes, and decisions from which our actions come. We may be able to convince other people that everything is fine, but we cannot hide our hearts from God.

The Problem Is Deeper Than Behavior

Jesus spoke directly to this when He explained where evil actions come from. In Mark 7:21–23, He said that evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, pride, and foolishness come from within, from the heart.

Jesus was not simply making a list of bad behaviors. He was identifying their source.

This is important because we often try to change our lives by dealing only with what appears on the surface. We see anger and tell ourselves to control our temper. We recognize dishonesty and decide to be more careful about what we say. We see jealousy and tell ourselves to stop comparing. We see a destructive habit and try to remove the circumstances that make it easier to indulge in it. Sometimes these decisions are necessary, but they do not necessarily reach the deepest part of the problem.

A person can learn to control one expression of a problem while the desire behind it remains. He may stop saying certain things while continuing to think them. He may change his environment without changing his heart. He may learn how to hide a weakness without actually overcoming it.

This is why genuine change is more difficult than simply deciding to behave differently. The problem is not always what we do. Sometimes the problem is what we have become inwardly capable of wanting and doing.

We Often Know More Than We Do

There is another reason this matters: most people know more about right and wrong than they consistently practice.

We know that honesty is better than deception. We know that uncontrolled anger can destroy relationships. We know that selfishness makes it difficult to love people well. We know that bitterness can poison relationships long after the original offence has passed. We know that some habits are damaging us, even while we continue returning to them. We know that there are things we should stop doing and things we should begin doing.

Yet knowing what is right does not automatically give us the power to do it.

The apostle Paul described this conflict in Romans 7:19: “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” His words describe something many people experience. We can sincerely want to change and still find ourselves repeating the very patterns we promised to leave behind.

This is one reason simple advice often fails us. We can tell ourselves to try harder, think positively, exercise more discipline, and make better choices, and some of these things can genuinely help. But eventually many of us discover that there are areas of our lives where determination alone does not seem sufficient. We may know what we should do and still find something within us resisting it.

That raises a deeper question: If I know what is right but cannot consistently live it, what is wrong with me?

Scripture Gives a Difficult Answer

The Bible does not flatter us with the idea that our greatest problem is simply a lack of information. It says, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

That statement includes people whose failures are obvious and people who have learned to hide theirs. It includes people who have made terrible decisions and people who consider themselves morally respectable. It includes religious people and people who want nothing to do with religion. Scripture's point is not that everybody has committed exactly the same wrongs. It is that every human being has fallen short of God's standard and is therefore in need of His mercy.

Sin is deeper than isolated mistakes. It describes a condition in which humanity has turned away from God and chosen to live independently of Him. We want many of the things God gives, but we do not naturally want God to govern us. We want life on our own terms. We want to determine for ourselves what is right and wrong, what we should pursue, and what authority should have the final word over our lives.

This is why the human problem cannot be solved merely by becoming more educated, more disciplined, more successful, or more religious. A person can improve his outward behavior and still remain separated from God. He can become more respectable without becoming reconciled to his Creator.

What If the Person You Need to Change Is You?

This is where the Christian message becomes more serious than ordinary advice about self-improvement.

Most advice begins with something like, “Here is what you need to do.” Scripture eventually brings us to another realization: the person who needs to change is not merely your circumstances; it is you.

That is difficult because we are often better at identifying what other people need to change than what we need to change ourselves. We can see another person's pride more easily than our own. We can recognize another person's selfishness while explaining our own. We can identify dishonesty in someone else while finding reasons for our own compromises.

But genuine change begins when we stop using other people's failures to avoid looking honestly at ourselves.

This does not mean living in constant self-condemnation. It means becoming honest enough to admit that we need help beyond ourselves.

And that is where Jesus enters the conversation.

The change is therefore both inward and outward. What God does within a person begins to affect how that person thinks, speaks, chooses, loves, forgives, works, and relates to others. The goal is not merely to look like a better person, but to become a different kind of person through the life God gives.

The New Testament uses the language of new creation to describe what happens when a person comes to Christ. Paul writes, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This does not mean that a person becomes perfect the moment he believes. It means that God does something deeper than giving better instructions. He brings a person into a new relationship with Himself and begins a work that changes the source from which life is lived.

God Does Not Only Want to Improve You

You do not need to be a Christian to begin asking this question seriously.

Look at the patterns in your life. What repeatedly gets the better of you? What do you continue doing even though you know it is damaging you or someone else? How do you behave when you are under pressure? What happens when someone disagrees with you? How do you treat people who cannot benefit you? What do you do when nobody is watching? What happens to your character when you have power, money, influence, or freedom?

These questions are not intended to make you hate yourself. They are intended to help you see yourself honestly.

We cannot deal honestly with what we refuse to acknowledge.

There is also wisdom here that applies to everyone. Be careful about the habits you allow to become normal. Do not assume that something is harmless simply because its consequences are not immediate. Learn to tell the truth even when the truth costs you something. Be willing to admit when you are wrong. Learn to forgive instead of allowing resentment to become part of your character. Treat people with dignity even when they have nothing to offer you. Do not allow success to make you proud or failure to make you despise yourself. Pay attention not only to what you are getting from life, but to what life is making you.

These principles can improve the way we live, but Scripture takes us further. It tells us that our need is not simply for better habits. We need to be restored to the God who made us.

And that is why the question of who is shaping you matters so much.

Perhaps the most important thing to notice is this: the person you are becoming is not determined only by what you achieve. It is also being shaped by what you love, what you trust, and what you allow to govern your life.

You do not have to have everything together before you begin seeking God. You can come with your questions, your failures, your doubts, and the parts of your life you do not know how to change.

If God created you, then He knows the person you were made to become. If sin has affected the human heart, then the change we need is deeper than improved habits. Scripture points us toward the One who can make that change possible.

The deeper issue, therefore, is not whether you are changing. You are. It is what is shaping that change and where it is taking you.

Every person is being shaped by something. Our desires shape us. Our relationships shape us. Our choices shape us. Our disappointments shape us. The voices we listen to shape us. The things we repeatedly give ourselves to shape us.