How Jesus Shows What God Is Really Like

We can see Jesus' personality revealed in the Gospel narratives, where he discloses thoughts, emotes feelings, expresses a point of view, and acts with deliberation, choosing certain alternatives and not others, even to the point of unveiling his inner motivations at times: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt 20:28).

This historical identity helps to keep Jesus real for his created—not an ethereal, but a thoroughly human being, whose personality is understandable both as the Son of Man, and beyond this, as Christ, the Son of God. Jesus shows through his behavior what God is really like, that God cares about people, seeks companionship, challenges injustice, fulfills promises, and searches for lost human beings in need of salvation and welcoming into God’s family.

Compass Psychotheology suggests that Jesus embodied normal psychological processes in his personality, conjoined with gifts of the Holy Spirit, revealing both God’s full immersion in human life and how God’s divine psychology finds an echoing partnership with human psychology. To further illuminate both Christ’s and human beings’ personality structure and function, Compass Psychotheology offers the Self Compass, an empirically validated growth tool for assessing personality and helping individuals develop more Christlike personal and interpersonal health in their lives.

Personality research using a variety of statistical tools reveals a rhythmic structure to personality that accounts for many of the seemingly opposing dynamics within a person.

Reducing these dynamics to their most elemental form, one can say that human beings universally experience both Love and Assertion, the compass points from which a person loves, cares for, or nurtures those in their interpersonal world, and stands against, challenges, or confronts them. The Weakness and Strength compass points exemplify the times when a person feels vulnerable, uncertain, or anxious, as well as those times when the person displays adequacy, confidence, and competence.

Love and Assertion, Weakness and Strength, when taken together, form an anagram: the “LAWS” of personality and relationships that create a trustworthy guide for understanding human behavior in its healthy or dysfunctional expressions.

Though many theories of personality exist, compass theory offers the advantages of simplicity for ease of memory, yet sophistication for classifying mental health disorders known as psychopathology.

Just as a rhythmic use of Love and Assertion, Weakness and Strength, leads to personality wholeness that Jesus exemplified and persons can develop, so does the rigid overuse of one or more compass points at the expense of the others lead to dysfunction. (For an in-depth treatment on how compass theory utilizes the Self Compass in counseling and psychotherapy, see Compass Therapy: Christian Psychology in Action).

Thus in compass theory terms, Jesus’ personality perfectly expresses the LAWS of healthy human behavior; that is, on every occasion, Jesus functions with a balanced Self Compass, in which he employs the rhythmic use of Love and Assertion, or Weakness and Strength, as appropriate to the situation and his purposes.

Free of personality rigidity, Jesus enjoys complete access to all four compass points. He forms loving friendships with Peter, James, John, and Mary Magdalene, yet sets assertive boundaries if they presume upon his aims as the Son of God.

By the same token, he preaches the gospel of the kingdom of God with loving conviction, yet assertively debates many religious leaders because of their hardness of heart. This balanced interplay between Love and Assertion keeps Christ from developing the exaggerated traits of dependence upon people’s approval (too much Love), or unforgiving anger toward others (too much Assertion).

Picture Jesus experiencing Weakness and Strength in the Garden of Gethsemane, falling down with anxiety, pleading with both his disciples and the Father to help him hold true to his mission for coming into the world: to die on the cross for the sins of all people. Yet when the guards come to arrest him, he strides forth with such strength of purpose that they are speechless.

Perhaps the greatest revelation of Christ’s balanced Self Compass lies in the Messianic names given to him: Jesus as the Good Shepherd (Love compass point) watches over his sheep and calls them by name; Christ as the Lion of Judah (Assertion compass point) fiercely opposes social injustice and judges the unrighteous; Jesus as the Lamb of God (Weakness compass point) gives his life to save people from the inseparable breach that sin creates between them and God; and Christ as the Prince of Peace (Strength compass point) becomes God’s reigning Messiah who overcomes sin and the devil to inaugurate the kingdom of God.

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