3 Bible Characters Who Experienced Dramatic Transformation

One of my favorite examples comes from the book of Genesis. Chapter 11 introduces us to a patriarch named Abram, later renamed Abraham, who gave birth to the Jewish nation. He spent his first seven decades in the Mesopotamian city of Ur. This trade port located near the mouth of the Euphrates River was known for its commerce, astrology, and polytheism. According to tradition, Abram’s father made and sold idols. One can assume, then, that Abram grew up worshiping the numerous false deities believed to govern the area. 

But then, one day, the Lord called him to leave his country, people, and his father’s household to embark on a journey to an undisclosed location. Through this, God was changing more than Abram’s location; He was inviting the man into a whole new way of life characterized by intimacy with his Creator. 

Initially, Abram responded with bold, unquestioning obedience. He soon found his courage challenged, however, when a famine threatened starvation for him and his clan. I suspect the Lord allowed this crisis to teach him to turn from self-sufficiency to humble dependence. Yet, that doesn’t appear to be how Abram responded.

Instead, he trusted in his faulty and short-sighted wisdom and traveled with his family to Egypt. Once there, fear motivated him to betray and abandon his wife, Sarai, later called Sarah, to the Pharaoh’s lustful intentions. While God intervened and rescued Sarai from the Egyptian palace, the situation, and a nearly identical repeat recorded in Genesis 20, revealed Abram’s dangerous tendency to rely on himself rather than God. 

Many discouraging years later, he yet again assumed he knew best and, without consulting the Lord, used his wife’s maidservant to produce an heir. Sadly, this created hostility between the two women and, later, between their sons. In Genesis 21:9-12 we read:

“But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, and she said to Abraham, ‘Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.’”

The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. But God said to him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”

Apparently, the pain he caused himself and his family greatly impacted him, because when the Lord asked him to sacrifice his beloved son, Abraham obeyed without question or hesitation. Genesis 22:9-10 states:

“When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.”

Imagine his relief when he learned this was merely a test (and a symbolic promise of future grace, brought through the death and resurrection of Christ). 

The Lord brought this man, who twice betrayed his wife to save himself, to a place where he was willing to yield his greatest treasure to the One who had, decades prior, called Abraham to Himself. 

Abraham’s life, driven by faith and fear, encourages me in my stumbling steps forward to focus on progress not perfection, trusting God to use each moment and mistake to build my character and deepen my faith.

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As one with a long history of anxiety, I’m comforted by God’s patience with Moses, the man called to liberate the ancient Hebrews from 400 years of slavery and oppression.

Having miraculously survived genocide, Moses was raised as an Egyptian prince, during which he likely learned invaluable leadership skills. But then, one day, he gave in to rage, committed murder and fled to the land of Midian, where he spent forty years as a fugitive, likely thinking he’d forfeited whatever dreams he held for his future. 

But the Lord found him in that foreign land, spoke to him through a bush that burned without becoming consumed, and told him to confront the Pharaoh. God said to him:

“I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey — the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:7-10). 

Moses argued with Him, basically stating, “Sorry, God. You’ve got the wrong guy. Choose someone else.”

Yet, notice how Scripture describes him, after his death some forty years later: 

“Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, who did all those signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do in Egypt — to Pharaoh and to all his officials and to his whole land. For no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel (Deut. 34:10-12). 

This tells me that I can start afraid, but end my life with a courageous impact by remaining close to God, learning to trust Him, and following however He leads. I, too, can become a woman of power and impact as I come to know the Lord face to face, a Hebrew idiom denoting relational intimacy.

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Many of us have loud inner critics who love to highlight our every mistake with little to no regard for our growth. Often, these nasty self-saboteurs grow loudest when we’ve hurt those we most care about.

When my negative self-talk pulls me toward discouragement, or worse, defeat, God’s radical transformation of a cruel murderer named Paul, once called Saul, speaks hope to my weary and disheartened soul. When we first encounter him in Scripture, he’s supervising, with approval, the first martyr stoned for his faith in Christ. Directly following, we read:

“But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison” (Acts 8:3).

Pause to envision the scene. Families torn apart. Women crying. Parents begging for mercy, not just for themselves, but for their children as well. This level of hard-heartedness is hard for most of us to fathom. We might even deem someone given to such cruelty beyond God’s redemptive grace. But that is precisely what makes Paul’s transformation so inspiring. While heading to a city called Damascus to arrest “followers of the way,” a first century term for Christ-followers, he personally encountered the risen Lord and he, and the world, were never the same. 

By God’s grace, the one who’d previously persecuted the Lord’s children began proclaiming the very gospel he’d viciously tried to suppress.  

If Jesus could extend mercy and grace to such a brutal murderer, then what does this indicate regarding His response to our failures and sins? We can also trust that the One who brought life from a previous “man of death” can replace our ugly behavior with beauty as well. As Philippians 1:6 assures us, He who began a good work in us will “carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” as we do our best to pursue Him who daily pursues us.

Photo credit: Raphael, Public domain image