I want to address something I’ve heard come up more than once, and maybe you’ve thought it too.
If we’re all becoming like Jesus, does that mean we all end up the same? Does growing into the image of God slowly flatten out everything that makes you distinctly you? Does sanctification produce one kind of person?
I want to sit with that question for a second because I actually think it points to something really important, and the answer is one of the most beautiful things I’ve come to understand about who God is.
There Is a Standard. And It’s Him.
Yes, there is a quality, a level of righteousness, a standard of goodness and kindness and love that every believer is moving toward. That standard is not abstract. It is a Person. It’s God Himself. God is love, and everything we’re becoming is rooted in that.
As we grow into imitators of God, as Paul calls us to be in Ephesians 5, we are all rising toward the same character. The same fruits. The same spirit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.
And here is what I find so merciful and so holy about that.
That standard does not erase who you are. It actually gives you the clearest picture of who you were always meant to be.
Diversity Is Not the Opposite of Holiness
I think sometimes we assume that if God is making us all into something, it must look uniform. Same expressions, same personalities, same ways of carrying things. But that’s not what we see anywhere in Scripture.
Look at the disciples. Look at the women who followed Jesus. Look at the writers of the New Testament. They were all being shaped by the same Spirit, walking with the same Lord, moving toward the same goodness. And they could not have been more different from one another.
Peter and John. Mary and Martha. Paul and Barnabas. Same Spirit. Completely different people.
The fruit of the Spirit is not a personality transplant. It’s not a mold everyone gets pressed into. It is fullness of life and peace and joy taking shape inside of a specific person, with a specific story, a specific voice, a specific calling.
That’s the beauty of it.
The Next Version of You Is Still You
What I’ve come to love about this is that becoming like Jesus is not a subtraction. You don’t lose yourself on the way to holiness. You find yourself.
The version of you that’s walking in more love, more patience, more peace, more kindness, she’s not a blander, quieter, more muted version of who you are right now. She’s the fullest expression of who God made you to be in the first place. She’s you, with less fear and less striving and less of the things that were never really you anyway.
That’s what the Spirit does. He doesn’t produce carbon copies. He produces fruit. And fruit, even from the same tree, never looks exactly the same on every branch.
What This Means for How You Build and Who You’re Becoming
This matters so much for how we show up in our businesses, our families, our callings. Because a lot of us are walking through seasons of real transformation right now. Shedding old things. Stepping into new ones. Trying to figure out which parts of who we were still belong and which parts are falling away.
And in the middle of all that becoming, it can be hard to know what’s staying. What’s actually you. What God is building versus what He’s removing.
That’s the kind of conversation I love most in coaching. Who are you becoming? Not just as a business owner or a mom or a leader, but as a person growing into the next version of herself? How do you hold the tension of transformation without losing your footing in who God has already called you?
If you’re in that season right now, I’d love to walk with you through it. Connect with me here and let’s talk.
And for more of this kind of conversation woven into everyday life, come listen to Laughing Over Tomorrow. New episodes are up and we’re going there every week.
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