The Gospel for the Enneagram 3
The Achiever or Performer
The 3’s: The Achiever
The Enneagram 3’s are known as the Achievers or Performers. They long for God’s glory and excellence. They delight in accomplishing things well and in the glory this produces. By the way, acquiring glory is not necessarily a bad thing. God made us to be glory-bearers in what we do: climbing the tallest mountain, performing a lovely ballet, playing an excellent game of baseball, etc. This feeling of exaltation when we do something well comes from God, which is why I think Satan attempts to make us feel guilty whenever we do something we truly glory in.
So where do the 3’s go wrong? In the heart, in their motive for seeking glory. Apart from God, the 3’s feel they MUST acquire their own glory in order to be accepted and loved. They feel that they have to prove their worth. It’s heart-breaking because the 3’s become slaves to never failing to put on a good performance. When 3’s fail, they either: disassociate from it, dress it up like it wasn’t failure, or blame someone else for it.
If the 2’s identity rests on other’s emotions and the 4’s identity rests their own emotions, the 3’s identity is disconnected from what they want or feel. See, the 3’s are so often playing a role, performing for people, that they begin to believe their performance IS who they are. Their sin is deceit—being someone they’re not. Interesting fact: Evangelical American pastors are often 3’s. And Americans in general value 3-ish strengths.
Examples: Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Muhammed Ali, Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Elvis Presley, Condoleeza Rice, Paul McCartney, Madonna, Sting, Whitney Houston, Tom Cruise, Barbra Streisand, Justin Bieber, Will Smith, Mr. Incredible, Buzz Lightyear in the First Toy Story. Some people think Jacob in the Bible was a 3, the deceiver.
What liberates the 3 from their need to perform? Christ’s performance. Jesus checked all the boxes and brought ultimate glory to God through his life and death. It’s like God made a contest to see who could be the best human and Jesus won the first place medal. And then Jesus gave us that medal to wear around our neck. We put on Jesus’ glory! And get to say, “I won through Christ!”
Thus the redeemed 3, who is trusting that God accepts them because of Christ’s performance, is okay with less than perfection. They’re okay that others might criticize them. They can even do things that people might think are not glorious because they know God’s measurement of success is different than man’s. God makes something of failures.
And that is the gospel for the Enneagram 3.
Sin Reminder
At this point, I want to reminder anyone who is NOT a 2, 3, or 4 about being judgmental. It’s easy for others to be disgusted with a 3 when they start working the crowd to gather admirers, or to roll our eyes when the 4’s start talking about how their art isn’t understood, or to get angry when the 2’s are patronizing or making martyrs of themselves.
It’s easy for us to want to shake them and say, “Snap out of it! Just trust God’s love!” But remember, these ways of coping are some of these people’s only ways of feeling loved, accepted, or valuable. How can they just stop? To stop people-pleasing or image-managing or performing would be suicide, heart suicide. It would be like asking them to step off a cliff. And unless they know that the Lord is going to catch them, they’re not going to do it.
Besides, only the Holy Spirit can lead someone off a cliff into God’s hands. And how can we encourage others to leap off that cliff into God’s hands? I think we can do this by jumping first, by allowing another’s sin to draw me off that cliff into God’s hands first. Other people’s sin is one of the ways God uses to draw out the poison of sin in our own bloodstream.
Go to the Lord and ask him to reveal what’s going on in your heart. And when he does, let the old self die. Step off that cliff and fall into God’s hands and yell back to those standing on the edge of the cliff that God caught you.
Here the cliff analogy breaks down because faith isn’t something we do once. Faith is something we do in all things, all day long. Like one step after another into seemingly thin air.
See, it is impossible and, frankly, fool-hearty for anyone to live like this without believing God is going to catch them. We need to see the evidence. For the 5, 6, and 7’s, it’s evidence that God provides security. For the 2, 3, and 4’s, it’s evidence of that particular kind of love. And for the 8, 9, and 1 it’s the evidence of God’s power at work.