What Is Spiritual Formation? Part 1

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.

{This is Part 1 of a 3-Part series on Spiritual Formation. Come back next week for Part 2, or read and comment on the whole thing now here…}