Ideal Personality

[ITS]

From the Beatitudes and in your own words, describe the ideal personality/temperament.

[Jim Fishback]

From the Beatitudes an ideal personality would be one with the correct posture or attitude toward God and towards man.

Towards God, they would recognize they are totally dependant upon God and they recognize they have nothing to offer to God. They can do nothing apart from God. They deserve judgment and not grace. This person will weep for their sin but also rejoice in God's forgiveness. They will also week for the sins of others because they will recognize the penalty for those sins. They will be gentle towards others and humble before God and man. They will desire to grow in their knowledge and love of God all of their lives.

Towards man, they will be merciful because they have received mercy. They will be sincere, transparent, and pure in relationships because of the work God has done in them. They will actively pursue peace in all their personal relationships. They are willing to be rejected for taking a stand for righteousness and for being bold enough to tell others about Jesus. This is an ideal personality from the beatitudes. One that none of us can attain apart from Jesus but one that all of us are being transformed into.

[nacltrey]

From the Beatitudes an ideal personality would be one with the correct posture or attitude toward God and towards man.

Towards God, they would recognize they are totally dependant upon God and they recognize they have nothing to offer to God. They can do nothing apart from God. They deserve judgment and not grace. This person will weep for their sin but also rejoice in God's forgiveness. They will also week for the sins of others because they will recognize the penalty for those sins. They will be gentle towards others and humble before God and man. They will desire to grow in their knowledge and love of God all of their lives.

Towards man, they will be merciful because they have received mercy. They will be sincere, transparent, and pure in relationships because of the work God has done in them. They will actively pursue peace in all their personal relationships. They are willing to be rejected for taking a stand for righteousness and for being bold enough to tell others about Jesus. This is an ideal personality from the beatitudes. One that none of us can attain apart from Jesus but one that all of us are being transformed into.

The above description is an excellent example of an ideal personality. I would only add that Christ calls his followers to a certain humble confidence that will evidence itself in their personality. He calls those that come after him to a certain vulnerability. They are called to make themselves vulnerable to their enemies and authorities. They place themselves in the same position in life that Christ took. They are to turn the other cheek and follow the second mile. At the same time they can display a quiet confidence in the one that calls them to live this way. Their house will be built on a rock, not on shifting sands. They can free themselves from worry. They have the confidence in Christ to be able to put themselves in a position of vulnerability.

[mchap]

From the Beatitudes, the ideal personality and temperment is one that incorporates the eight qualities of Mt. 5:3-10. The first four Beatitudes characterize the ideal personality for one's relationship to God. These traits include a humble and contrite spirit, a mourning over evil in the world and over one's own sins, a meek and gentle attitude towards others due to one's position before God, and a continued appetite for righteousness through a hungering for the spiritual over the material. The second four Beatitudes characterize the ideal personality for one's relationship to others. These traits include mercy towards others, a heart and motives that are pure and void of hyprocrisy, peacemaking that involves reconciliation not appeasement, and accepting persecution as a token of genuine true discipleship.

[mchap]

Jim does well to characterize the ideal personality with respect to the Beatitudes as one with the correct posture and attitude toward God and towards man. I would disagree though with Jim's low estimate of the worth of man. Mankind is appointed by God as His representatives (sonship) to rule the earth in His place (Gen. 1:26-28). We are children of God and fellow heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:16-17). Moreover, we have much to offer God by using our spiritual gifts in various ministry roles in the church.


From the Beatitudes an ideal personality would be one with the correct posture or attitude toward God and towards man.

Towards God, they would recognize they are totally dependant upon God and they recognize they have nothing to offer to God. They can do nothing apart from God. They deserve judgment and not grace. This person will weep for their sin but also rejoice in God's forgiveness. They will also week for the sins of others because they will recognize the penalty for those sins. They will be gentle towards others and humble before God and man. They will desire to grow in their knowledge and love of God all of their lives.

Towards man, they will be merciful because they have received mercy. They will be sincere, transparent, and pure in relationships because of the work God has done in them. They will actively pursue peace in all their personal relationships. They are willing to be rejected for taking a stand for righteousness and for being bold enough to tell others about Jesus. This is an ideal personality from the beatitudes. One that none of us can attain apart from Jesus but one that all of us are being transformed into.

[KY Distance Learner]

I think the postings on the ideal personality have captured the essence of the content of the Sermon on the Mount very well. The Beatitudes have been cited often by the previous posters. We should also consider Christ's words in Matthew 6:1-4, where Jesus teaches us about almsgiving. We should strive to incorporate into our personalities a sensitivity to the needs of others and respond by sharing our material possessions in the appropriate way. The ideal personality and temperment would therefore include being a sharing, giving person, as well. I would also say that we should pray to God that He would help us to manifest the fruits of the Spirit in our personality. (Gal. 5:22-23). There, we are reminded of the importance of gentleness, kindness, love, goodness, and many other qualities which will mark the Christian as being different from the world, all by God's grace, of course.

[Douglas]

In light of the Beatitudes, the ideal person will grapple with the subjective and objective elements of living in this present world. This is really an issue of perspective. There is sometimes a tendency to consider issues related to the Beatitudes in a way that overemphasizes one or the other. Some simply see them eschatologically, having little concern for contemporary application. This tendency must be resisted. Jesus is not simply talking about a future state of affairs, but is compelling his followers to think about what it means to live godly in this present world. Trusting in God’s grace, it will take perspective to humbly apply the Beatitudes in the present. This is the subjective element.

While, in temperament, the Christian must humbly fall in contrition before the gracious God who forgives, knowing full well that he or she has nothing to offer in the redemptive process. Nevertheless, he or she must also strive and seek to live by the standard of Christ, the ultimate Ideal. This is the objective element.

[Douglas]

In light the responses, I'm not sure if Jim is advocating a low view of man, or is he is simply singling out the condition of man as it relates to his or her ability to gain salvation by one's own merits. I would definitely agree with the comment that human's are valuable, not because of sin, but because they do bear the image of God, and on that basis alone, are worth redeeming in the eyes of God. The ideal human being understands his or her condition not simply in sinful categories, but the theological category of the imago Dei.

[dwitsken]

The ideal kingdom-subject recognizes their own inability to live up to the King's perfect standard of righteousness and they sincerely mourn over their transgressions; not simply because of guilt but because they revere the will of their King. Though unable to meet his standard of righteousness, they still desire it and humbly seek after it. They have pure hearts, doing the right things for the right reasons. Having a healthy perspective of their own spiritual poverty and need for mercy, they, in turn, are gentle and merciful to others. Having been reconciled to God and to his family, they seek the same reconciliation for others. Lastly, though the righteousness they seek is counter-cultural and offensive to others, they persevere and remain faithful to their Lord, Jesus Christ.

[dwitsken]

. . .I would definitely agree with the comment that human's are valuable, not because of sin, but because they do bear the image of God, and on that basis alone, are worth redeeming in the eyes of God. . . .
Douglas' argument says that, although man can do nothing to earn his salvation, God redeems man because of some remnant of intrinsic worth existing in man after the Fall. I would argue that we should avoid using the imago Dei as an argument for the intrinsic worth of post-Fall man. The Bible tells us how, not why, God redeems man and we should be satisfied with that. Jim Fishback’s statement was biblically accurate, that we "have nothing to offer to God." Although this may be a low view of man, it leads us to a sense of the spiritual poverty Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount.

[Samuel Xie]

From the Beatitudes and in your own words, describe the ideal personality/temperament.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus describes ideal Christian's character, which could be also called ideal personality in the redeemed sense after the Fall of mankind. This ideality is demonstrated in sequence in his recovered relationship with both God and man, and both internally and externally. With God, internally, he recognizes his own spiritual bankruptcy (Matt 5:3), mourns for his own sin and the sin of others, is thus meek, and hunger and thirst for God's rightousness. With man, externally, his action is changed dramatically. He is merciful toward others, pure in heart, making peace, and enduring persecutions.

[Samuel Xie]

The ideal kingdom-subject recognizes their own inability to live up to the King's perfect standard of righteousness and they sincerely mourn over their transgressions; not simply because of guilt but because they revere the will of their King. Though unable to meet his standard of righteousness, they still desire it and humbly seek after it. They have pure hearts, doing the right things for the right reasons. Having a healthy perspective of their own spiritual poverty and need for mercy, they, in turn, are gentle and merciful to others. Having been reconciled to God and to his family, they seek the same reconciliation for others. Lastly, though the righteousness they seek is counter-cultural and offensive to others, they persevere and remain faithful to their Lord, Jesus Christ.

dwitsken seems to lessen the weight of the first two beatitudes. Although the ideal kingdom-subject does recognize their inability and failure in conformity to God's will, their recognition rather goes deeper than mere external inability and failure. They recognize their own inner spiritual poverty (Ps 34:18; Isa 61:1) and thus mourn over both their guilts and trangressions. In addition, dwitsken does not talk anything about the third beatitude, that is, "the meek."

[bj.dagen]

Two things strike me about the ideal personality. One is that the follower of Christ is to have deeply rooted passions. Even a peripheral reading of the Beatitudes shows that Christians are to deeply feel. There is a command to mourn. We are to feel the heinousness of sin deeply, both in our lives and in the lives of others. Hungering and thirsting conjures up images of the psalmist passionately hungering for God like a deer pants for water (Ps. 42:1). Even the command to be merciful requires seeing and feeling needs on a deep level. Whether they are described as passions or religious affections (Jonathan Edwards), they seem to belong to the Christian life.

The other thing that strikes me about the ideal personality is that Jesus did not give separate lists of male and female traits. That is not to imply that there are no gender differences, but it does point out how the list of kingdom characteristics mentioned by Jesus are to apply to all followers.

[bj.dagen]

With regard to mchap's comment, I don’t think that Jim was presenting a “low estimate of the worth of man.” He was simply presenting the truth that we can do anything good only because it is God working through us (John 15:5; Rom. 15:18; 1 Cor. 15:10). There is, I think, a great danger in western evangelicalism that magnifies the need of grace at the moment of conversion yet seems to minimize the subsequent need for grace for the rest of life. This would include minimizing the need of grace in the sanctification process as well as in ministry efforts. Too often it seems like there is the view, “Thanks, I’ll take it from here.”