What Is Spiritual Formation?

Why am I the way that I am? Why are you the way you are? Why do we get angry when a car cuts us off, get defensive when someone we admire is criticized, or feel tempted to “shade the truth” in certain situations? Of course, there are positives too…you find some things easy that others find very difficult, you sacrifice yourself to do what is right when others hide. In each situation, the question is “why?” Why do we respond the way that we do? Our reactions are generally not well-thought-out responses, they are just that, reactions. Almost like a knee-jerk reflex, something happens, and we react. But why do we react the way that we do? And do we react in the moment the way that we’d prefer to react if we had more time to think about it, to consider what it means to be a Christian in a given situation?

Ephesians 4 says that the goal of ministry is that we all together grow in maturity in Christ, “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:11–14). In other words, the reason we go to church and read the Bible and learn to pray and generally follow Jesus is so that we can grow up and live more like Jesus, so that the way I respond to any given situation increasingly looks like the way that Jesus would respond were the same thing to happen to him. But if I’m honest, that doesn’t look a lot like my actual life. When I look at my own life, and my heart and my motivations, it doesn’t look a lot like Jesus. Why is that?

First Formation

From the earliest age, we begin developing a way of interacting with others and the world around us. Through a combination of our temperament and the environment we grew up in, certain behaviors have become innate to us. We learned a set of behaviors to maximize pleasure and minimize pain and to stay safe. Maybe you had an experience that led you to believe that telling the truth can get you in trouble. Maybe you learned that being incredibly helpful will earn me the praise of others. These experiences begin to form us in habitual ways of acting towards others and towards the surrounding world. But the powerful thing is that this formation happens at a level outside our conscious awareness, such that the habits we develop at this stage don’t feel like habits; they are second nature — like blinking or breathing. Others have referred to this as our “first formation” ( Herrington, Jim, Trisha Taylor, and R. Robert Creech. The Leader’s Journey: Accepting the Call to Personal and Congregational Transformation. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020).

Now, there are a lot of ways that we interact in the world that are fine, or that are positive and wonderful. But have you ever had an experience where you did something and then immediately were horrified by your own behavior? “Why did I do that?” “Why did that come out of me, and where did it come from?” When we’re really honest, there’s a darkness deep within each of us. And so the reality of the Christian life is that we’re trying to grow up into the fullness of the stature of Christ, but it’s not coming naturally. The Westminster Confession, one of the great summaries of the the Christians faith, says that the goal of our lives is to “glorify God and enjoy him forever,” but if we’re honest, we’re not sure we’re bringing any glory to God, and we’re honestly not that sure we’d enjoy spending much time with him.

In Luke 6, Jesus makes an obvious, yet profound analogy. He says that a bad tree bears bad fruit, and a good tree bears good fruit. Good fruit doesn’t grow on a bad tree, and bad fruit doesn’t grow on a good tree. Figs don’t grow on thorn bushes and grapes don’t grow on shrubs. And then he says this: “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” In other words, no matter what is on the inside, it’s eventually gonna show up on the outside. Uh oh!

So if I’m a Christian, I’ve been justified by grace through faith in Christ (Ephesians 2), and I am clean and forgiven in him. I stand, objectively and definitely in the sight of God, forgiven and redeemed. There is nothing I can ever do to make God love me more, and there’s nothing I can do that would make him ashamed of me, because I am complete in Christ. AND YET — at the very same time — there is the reality that I daily, hourly, moment by moment fall so far short of who he has called me to be, I don’t even live up to my own expectations, much less God’s hopes for me.

Spiritual Formation

With this background, we can begin to understand what spiritual formation is. By the time you’ve begun to think about it, you already have a way of interacting in the world. Your internal wiring and your experiences of life have combined to form in you a default way of living, which quite often does not reflect the reality of who you are in Christ. So spiritual formation is really the work of transformation, where the Spirit of God re-forms us from the inside out so that the things that are true of us because of our justification come to more and more reflect that way that we actually live our lives. Spiritual formation is the process of transformation such that, in any given situation, the words and thoughts and actions that come out of us authentically are the words and thoughts and actions of Jesus that would come out of Christ were he in the same circumstance. The Bible talks about this reality in a variety of ways:

• Galatians 5 says the “fruit of the Spirit is love — joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” You could actually become a patient person. We could actually become gentle people.
• 1 Corinthians 13 says “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” We could actually become loving people. I could actually become the sort of person who bears all things, instead of yelling at every idiot who drives his car like an idiot. I could love people. Amazing!
• Romans 12:2 says “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” so that we more fully understand the good and perfect will of God.
• Colossians 3 and Ephesians 4 both talk about “putting off the old self” (our first formation, or former way of living) and “putting on the new self”, “which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”

The whole New Testament points to this truth: the goal of the Christian life is to be transformed so that we look more and more like Jesus, so that our responses and reactions to the people and circumstances of our lives more naturally resemble the life of Christ. This is the work the Spirit of God is doing in us, and though it is never complete in this life, we can expect to see real progress as we walk with Jesus.

The Problem

The obvious question at this point is “how does this happen?” But before we consider that question, we have to confront a troubling reality: The problem the church faces today is that actually living like Jesus is considered an impossibility by most Christians. More than that, it’s not even a desirable outcome. For the most part, Christians today believe a worldly lifestyle is to be preferred to a Christian one, so we pick and choose the areas in which we will suck it up and follow the “lesser way” of Christ. How tragic!

Beginning some time after World War II, discipleship began to be thought of as an “extra-credit elective” for churches and individual Christians. How and why this happened is beyond the scope of this essay (but see my podcast for more), but it is now beyond dispute that many people (both inside and outside the church) believe that there is a version of Christianity that involves something less than learning to do all of the things Jesus taught us. Indeed, most people would believe that such an expectation is the height of legalism; somehow we have forgotten that teaching people to do everything that Jesus taught us was literally the last thing Jesus told his followers to do before he ascended into heaven.

Believing that we are saved by grace, many of us are now paralyzed by grace. Rather than following in the pathways of formation the church has employed for 2000 years, because we believe we are saved by grace, we don’t do anything. But the Spirit who applies the work of Christ on the cross to us intends to “carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6). It’s impossible to function in our modern world without being immersed in our culture. Technology pumps the world’s values into us at an unprecedented rate. I’m no Luddite, but it’s naive to ignore the reality that most of us are being formed by our culture far more than we are being formed by the Spirit through his chosen instrument — the church. Simply considering how much time we spent immersed in scripture versus how easily we lose ourselves in social media shows us the extent to which our culture is forming us. As a parent of adolescents, I’m wrestling through the ways we’ll allow our kids to navigate this brave new world, and there are no simple answers. But what is clear is this: we live in a time where the world has unprecedented resources to form us into its mold, at the same time that the church has largely abdicated its formational role in the hopes of merely retaining our engagement. Going with the flow of the culture will only take us downstream; while the Scriptures call us to set our minds on things above, where Christ — who is the very essence of our life — is seated with God (Colossians 3:1–4).

In short, the promise of the New Testament is that there is another version of you — a you who is free from doing that thing that you swore you would never do again, but somehow you can’t seem to help — a you who doesn’t even want to look at porn or drink too much; a you who can anticipate the allure of money made less-than-honestly, or a shopping splurge you can’t really afford, and decides in advance to just not walk into that room. There is a version of yourself that truly delights in goodness, beauty and truth, and who in fact refuses to be satisfied with anything short of Perfection Incarnate. Do you want to meet that version of yourself? Because the Spirit of God is hellbent on introducing you.

What would that look like? How might that happen?

How does Spiritual Formation work?

Christian spiritual formation is the process through which the Holy Spirit transforms our volition/will, so that the version of our selves that shows up each morning looks more and more like Jesus living through us, “ to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). Dallas Willard writes “When we speak of spiritual formation we are speaking of the formation of the human spirit. And the spirit is the will or the heart and by extension, the character. And that, in practice, lives mainly in our bodies.” Spiritual formation doesn’t mean we exert more willpower to do what Jesus wants us to do, even when we don’t want to do it (though there are much worse ways we could spend our time); it means, rather, that our volition is transformed by the Spirit, so that we want to live more in line with the way Jesus wants us to live, with the result that our behavior naturally flows from our transformed will, and looks more like the way Christ would live were he in our shoes.

So, how does that happen? This may be the most critical question modern Christians will have to wrestle with. Because the first and most obvious answer is that this is the work of the Holy Spirit within us — any progress we make in this arena is the fruit of the Spirit’s work in our lives, as he transforms us into the image of Christ. AND YET, we have to be careful, because this does not imply that spiritual formation is something that merely happens to us, in which we are merely passive objects. Willard again: “We have to recognize that spiritual formation in us is something that is also done to us by those around us, by ourselves, and by activities which we voluntarily undertake.” In other words, the Spirit does the work, but it will not happen without us. I said above that we are both saved and paralyzed by grace, and Willard’s words are helpful here as well: “Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning.” The idea that grace means we sit on the couch while God does all the work of transforming us into renewed people who save the world without exerting any effort defies both logic and scripture.

Spiritual formation, then, begins with the promise of who you are in Christ — redeemed, restored, set free — and the vision of who you might become in Him. Yes, in the life to come, but also in the here and now. If you want to experience that vision, the next step in intention. It’s one thing to want to lose 20 pounds; it’s another thing to intend to do so. I may want to run a marathon, but if I actually intend to, I have to get out of bed and run for months before I actually do it. Many of us want to experience the life of heaven, but intention requires that we set our minds on it, be willing to change our behavior and even make sacrifices, in order to live that life now. It is possible — we know because the Spirit promises — but it will not happen apart from our intention. Finally, we have to do actual things. We need a methodology. Just as preparation for a marathon involves running and diet, so life in the kingdom involves certain activities. Waking before dawn, running and avoiding food that tastes good does not make you a marathoner, any more than reading the Bible and praying makes you acceptable to God. Yet apart from the methodology, the identity is sure to wane. The Bible invites us into specific practices — prayer, confession, silence, hospitality, the sacraments, and the like — not because they make us more pleasing to God, but because God uses these methods to form us into the image of Chris.

What’s required to grow more into Christ-likeness is vision, then intention, and then a method, in that order. This is how spiritual formation happens. First, vision means that we must have a clear idea about the sort of person we will become. And not just any vision, but a Spirit-informed, biblical picture of the sort of person God intends to shape us into. As the cheshire cat said to Alice, “if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” The first challenge modern Christians face is that we no longer trust the infallible word of God to cast our vision of the good life, and we therefore find ourselves hoping that we can achieve worldly metrics of success without entangling ourselves in “sin.” C.S. Lewis observed over half a century ago that we lack the imagination to envision the life to which God is calling us, and therefore “we are far too easily pleased.” But the invitation of Jesus is not that of a life of drudgery lived in the doldrums, it is rather an invitation into a life that has been and will yet be transformed by death, a life that is set free from slavery to self and sin, a life in which every suffering is transformed but the surpassing glory of knowing Christ, indeed, by being invited into the very life of the triune God himself! We must have a clear vision of the sort of life into which God is forming us, a vision shaped by the very voice and word of God himself.

If we catch this vision, the next question becomes one of intention. Do we want to experience the vision God holds out to us in his word? Are we willing to forsake alternative visions for the sake of God’s vision? In a time where everyone believes that spirituality should feel “organic,” this is a question we must seriously contend with! DNA tests like 23andMe can tell us what sort of career and lifestyle we are genetically predisposed to, and advances in technology can soon predict what will make us happy and then create it for us. In short, we are living in a world where our feelings are easily hacked, and while this can no doubt lead to nefarious outcomes (as in recent political contests), it can perhaps be more destructive in leading us into a future where we are constantly given exactly what we want, with the result that human agency has been effectively bypassed, and the will is no longer required. Just react, just follow your feelings. Spiritual formation involves the redemption of our volition; if we hope to realize in any way the vision held out to us by the Spirit in the Bible, we must intentionally intend to do so.

The third step in the process is methodology — once we comprehend in some way what God is calling us to, and once we intend to follow Jesus in his way, we must actually do real things. What methodology is involved in the transformation of our volition to more fully align our desires with those of Christ? There’s a risk of responding either too simply or with far too much detail. Different Christian traditions emphasize different aspects of the spiritual life. Charismatics emphasize certain “gifts of the Spirit,” evangelicals mostly look to someone who’s willing to pray in public, and our own (reformed) tradition looks only to one’s ability to articulate theological answers. A more thorough investigation of the relevant literature might suggest that someone wanting to grow in Christlikeness needs to attend to dozens upon dozens multiplied by another dozen of different biblical characteristics. Faith, hope and love, the 10 commandments, the Pastoral Epistles’ various lists of characteristics for elders and deacons, the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, Jesus summation of the law in Matthew 22, his heightening of the law in the Sermon on the Mount, and several other places in the Old and New Testaments fill out the picture of what a mature follower of Christ might look like in our time or any other. At the risk of oversimplification, and in an effort to pastor a specific group of actual human beings, I have tried to summarize the Bible’s various pictures of discipleship in 6 characteristics, hoping that these 6 will encompass the others in their embodiment. There are some things we must do, and there are some things we must simply be, so I’m summarizing a methodology for Christian discipleship in 3 convictions and 3 practices.

In time I hope to develop these 6 characteristics more fully, in fact to develop (or find) courses to help Christians focus on and develop each characteristic. For now, I simply want to conclude by pointing out that vision, intention and methodology are critical for spiritual formation. In my experience churches tend to focus on either vision or methodology. As a pastor I certainly have experience casting vision — we can preach sermons painting beautiful pictures of the future to which God is calling us, but leaving people wondering how this future will ever become reality. It’s also fairly easy to give specific instruction on how to do something. But I’ve also had the experience of teaching a group of people how to read the Bible and pray who had absolutely no intention of learning to do so, and lo and behold, my instruction bounced right off them. Churches, pastors, teachers and leaders can do vision and methodology, but we cannot make anyone care. Vision, intention and methodology are all crucial, but the battle will be won or lost over intention.

Luke 14 describes crowds of people clamoring over Jesus. They had seen his miracles and imbibed his teaching — they caught the vision. And so Jesus asks them about their intention. Would you plan a building project without first figuring out if you can afford to complete it? Who would lead people into battle without first estimating one’s odds at success? Before impulsively setting off on the adventure of life in the Kingdom, Jesus urges us to count the cost — are we willing to endure the scorn of family members who don’t understand us? Are we willing to say no to the allure of worldly success? Are we willing to make deep personal sacrifices to follow the way of Jesus? We must make our intention clear, because the way will not be clear, quick or easy. It will be more than worth it, but there will be many points along the way where we will question that reality. Jesus does not require perfection — we will get discouraged and lose the way. But in our weakness, the Spirit who is at work within us “intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26).

God is at work within us, transforming our minds that we might ponder the height and depth and length and breadth of the love of Christ (Eph. 3:18), transforming our willing and our working (Phil. 2:13), that when circumstances press in on us, the thoughts, words and actions that come out of us might more fully reflect the thoughts, words and actions of Jesus. This is Christian spiritual formation. We live in a world where fortunes are spent creating algorithms that can predict and then form our lives into the image of our world. But take heart, because “he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4), and once he has begun his work in you, he will surely accomplish it.