Lecture

Spiritual formation is increasingly becoming a term used in many different kinds of evangelical ministry settings for building depth, commitment, and active pursuit of God into the lives of individual Christians and their communities of faith. It requires a commitment to in-depth biblical spirituality in the lives of those who have put their trust solely in the pure gospel of salvation by grace through faith alone in Jesus Christ our Lord.

From a biblical point of view, probably the best way to define spiritual formation as a synonym of spiritual growth is to consider passages that put the Holy Spirit in the context of forming or transforming or conforming one’s life toward Christlikeness like in Galatians 4:19. When you understand it this way, spiritual formation is first of all, above all, and throughout the shaping or forming work of the divine Holy Spirit carried out according to the will of God the Father for the purpose of conforming us to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.

There’s this passage in Romans 8:27–29, which goes like this:

“…the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless with groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”

So we have this sequence in this passage from the Spirit Himself intercedes and He does it according to the Father’s will, and the Father works this out according to His predestined work to conform us to the likeness of His Son, Jesus Christ. It’s Trinitarian by its very nature. And this is important. It’s the Trinitarian work of God.

Now spiritual formation is not a biblical term, but I teach at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Trinity isn’t a biblical term either. Nevertheless, there’s a great deal of information in the Bible to teach us that the Trinity’s an important concept in our understanding of God, even though we don’t completely understand the Trinity. The same is true of spiritual formation. It’s not a biblical term specifically, but the term spiritual and being formed are there and they’re connected, so there’s a bit of mystery in understanding the Trinity. There’s also a bit of mystery in understanding how the Holy Spirit actually brings about the transforming work that He does and that’s part of understanding what spiritual formation is.

Some are a bit suspicious of spiritual formation because of the background the term has in some of the theology and in some of the practices, and some of this is associated with different kinds of backgrounds say within the Roman Catholic Church or various sources that are there. And I’ll be talking about that some in this lecture.

We should be concerned about that, of course. What I am concerned about here though is developing a thoroughly biblical and evangelical tradition of spiritual formation. That means that we need to do some serious biblical theological work to provide a foundation and some direction for it in the church and in our own lives.

God is using spiritual formation today to help us go deeper in Christ. Some of what has happened under the guise of church growth or church marketing over the past few decades has shallowed the church, and God is concerned to use spiritual formation today in a way that deals with this problem and takes us deep into life through the Spirit growing into the image of Christ according to the will of God the Father. That’s what this whole thing is really all about in the first place, and it does seem like God is really using it in light of all that’s been happening around the country and around the world in this field.

Now there’s three main dimensions of spiritual formation. At the core of this spirituality is intimacy with God through the presence of the Holy Spirit who works in us and among us to conform us to the image of Christ. And He does that, also, to bind us together in community with other believers and furthermore, to empower us as servants of God in the kingdom mission to spread the gospel and live as salt and light in the world. This is basically what spiritual formation is about.

So, in talking about a spiritual formation ministry then, what we’re talking about is that we are seeking to stimulate and support the ongoing, spiritually transforming work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is really the One who does this, who energizes it, makes it happen. We can’t make this happen, but the Holy Spirit works, and we are supporting and stimulating that work in and through the personal lives, relationships, and ministries of genuine believers so that we all progressively become more conformed to the image of Christ according to the will of God the Father, echoing again that passage from Romans 8 and many other passages that are connected to this discussion.

So there are basically these three dimensions that we have just introduced here of this work of the Holy Spirit that show up in Scripture, and so we want to work into them. Each of them has connections from the Old Testament into the New Testament, and each has specific New Testament applications for the Christian life. And each dimension is inextricably bound up with the other two as well.

I have this chart that you’ll see in the notes that’s intended to illustrate these three dimensions and the relationships between them. First, you see that it’s a series of three concentric circles, meaning that they’re all of one piece. The whole system is bound together into this concentric circle set. Then as you look at the concentric circles, first at the inner circle, you have the Holy Spirit and His work in the human spirit, and that’s the first main topic we’re going to take up in the following lectures. The Holy Spirit and how He works in the human spirit. There’s not nearly enough that’s been said, at least in the circles that I am in, about the Holy Spirit and especially about understanding biblically the human spirit. There needs to be work done on that if we’re going to understand spiritual formation and the way the Holy Spirit actually makes it happen.

The next concentric circle around that I have entitled “The Temple of God” and “The Temple of the Holy Spirit” because temple and tabernacle, sanctuary terminology from the Old Testament comes through into the New Testament and God is building a temple of the Holy Spirit in us. We are a temple individually, but also the whole corporate church is a temple of the Holy Spirit. We’ll talk about that, and so that’s about a community-type development in spiritual formation.

First, the inner core is about the Holy Spirit’s work in our human spirit. Second, you have this building of a community of faith in the second circle, this temple concept, and then the third concentric circle I have entitled “Prophetic Spirit and Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit also has come into our lives to make us prophetic in the world, to have an impact in the world, and so His forming work includes both working in us and working, second, among us and then, third, working through us in the world and all three dimensions of this work of the Holy Spirit are what the Holy Spirit is shaping us in. This is what spiritual formation is actually all about, and so this terminology is very important and the various kinds of words that are related to it. These words for forming or transforming or conforming are words that come from the Greek word morphe. We have the word morphology or metamorphosis or these kinds of words in English that come from this Greek word, and what this is really about is bringing those kinds of words into connection with the Holy Spirit who does this forming work and that is how we’re defining spiritual formation. And as you do the biblical theology of it, we seem to find three main dimensions of that, the three concentric circles.

You’ll notice that also there are these arrows pointing inward and outward in this design. The arrows in and out show that each dimension reverberates against the others as they pulse. It’s like a living thing. They echo against each other and impact each other as this design pulses like a human heart. It’s a living thing like a beating heart. If one part, therefore, does not work well, it sabotages the other parts just like in the human heart. There has to be this ongoing dynamic of these three dimensions working in order to be truly biblical spiritual formation, and that’s what we are really wanting to talk about here in these lectures.

Now the next part of the notes talks about discipleship, sanctification, and spiritual formation. I’m trying to define these words in terms in relationship to one another. Discipleship is a term that, of course, we get the word disciple from it. It is an adherent to a particular teacher—a learner or pupil, or maybe better, apprentice is a good term here. The apprentice follows the teacher around, imitates what he does, tries to follow the way he does it, assists him in doing it, serves him. This is a disciple, an apprentice, and the word discipleship is really about that kind of relationship with the Lord. The disciple is committed and disciplined. The word discipline is related to the word disciple, and discipline means well-trained, a follower of a particular teacher, a rabbi. And in fact in John 1:38, 49, Jesus is actually referred to as a rabbi. As a rabbi, Jesus not only taught us how to live, but actually lived in such a way that we can see what it looks like to live out what He taught. That’s what He is as a rabbi. So He taught us and he lived it. So He’s both our teacher and our example.

Jesus has commissioned us in Matthew 28, and this comes out in other places as well in various forms, but He’s commissioned us “to make disciples,” make followers out of all people from various nations, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them.” Discipleship is very close to being learners, to being taught by a master. Teaching them, but not just teaching them concepts. Teaching them, as it says, to obey everything I have commanded you. A disciple is not just a learner. He’s one that actually does what is taught and, therefore, it’s got to do with obeying. So discipleship is very much tied in with these kinds of apprenticeship, a teacher/student relationship, teaching, following the rabbi around. This is the kind of expression that it is.

Now sanctification comes from the Latin word sanctus. We get our word sanctuary from it, for example. And it arises and it’s used in the Old and New Testaments, this word sanctification, for being holy or sacred. Sanctuary refers to a holy place and the word saints in the New Testament is actually a word for a sacred or holy person. We are called to be saints—sacred, holy persons—and we are made that by the purifying and sanctifying blood of Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We’re made sacred people. That’s how God views us—as people who know Him.

This is our identity before God. We are His sanctified holy ones. And the ongoing process of our sanctification is a continuation of that saving work of God in our lives. We have been saved; we are being saved; and we will be saved. These are all parts of God’s sanctifying work in us. It’s a progressive, ongoing thing.

Spiritual formation, then, in relationship to discipleship and sanctification has a specific kind of focus to it. Here the Holy Spirit is the one who God the Father at the request of Jesus the Son has given us in this day and age to guide and enable this discipleship and this sanctification. So it actually enables us to function as followers of Jesus. There’s this passage in John 14:16–17: “I will ask the Father,” Jesus says, “and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” There’re all sorts of interesting things in those verses, but the connection between Jesus and the Father and how they are really employing their work through this helper, this Holy Spirit person of the Trinity; this is important for understanding spiritual formation if we’re going to understand it as the work of the Holy Spirit transforming us.

So spiritual formation, then, is a term that talks about first the dynamic and its emphasis on the divine power and means of formation. So it’s the power. It’s the dynamic of how discipleship and sanctification actually work, and second, it is deep in its focus on the inner workings of the human person at the core and then building that on out into the community and into the mission in the world. So the Spirit of God reaches into the spirit of the person to do the core of His work. Romans 8 talks specifically about that as we’ve seen.

There’s another passage there in Romans 8, and we’ll see more about this later, but maybe I should anticipate that here. In Romans 8:16, “The Spirit” of God “Himself testifies with our” human “spirit that we are children of God.” There’s something going on between the Holy Spirit of God and the human spirit of the person that is tied in with our actual adoption and our taking in the significance of that adoption by God.

God has not, therefore, called us to something without enabling us to actually do it. He’s not sitting by to see how we do. Jesus did not leave us commands and no power to fulfill them. The idea is that there is a divine person, the Holy Spirit, continually at work in us who acts directly on the deepest parts of us on our human spirit to transform us and our relationships and our effectiveness in the world into something that’s truly pleasing to Him. And we’ll come back and say more about that in later lectures as well.

Now, this has just been so far an introduction to try to understand what we’re talking about when we’re talking about spiritual formation. It’s a dynamic and it’s a deep work that is enabling and is motivating, and it turns our heart in a direction that isn’t going to happen in any other way.

Now there are, however, some things as I anticipated earlier that need to be said about problems in this field that should be anticipated at the beginning of the discussion. For example, Ignatius of Loyola, back in 1491–1556 was when in lived; he was the founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, and one of the leaders of the Counter Reformation, and he wrote this in his spiritual exercises. This is actually the first paragraph of his spiritual exercises, which is about spiritual formation and its historical manifestations. He wrote this:

“By the terms spiritual exercises is meant every method of examination, of conscience, of meditation, of contemplation, of vocal and mental prayer, and of other spiritual activities that will be mentioned later. For just as taking a walk, journeying on foot, and running are bodily exercises, so we call spiritual exercises every way of preparing and disposing the soul to rid itself of all inordinate attachments, and, after their removal, of seeking and finding the will of God in the disposition of our life for the salvation of our soul.”

Now, there’s all sorts of good things in that paragraph, but one of the things that takes place is that he actually attaches spiritual formation as a process through which you somehow attain salvation of our soul.

Now, it’s true that good works are of great importance to us in the Christian life. We have passages like, for example, in Ephesians we have this passage, Ephesians 2:8–10, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves,” but “it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Then the next verse, verse 10 goes on to say, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” God is working His grace and it’s completely through faith. It’s not of any kind of our own works that we become accepted by God. It’s by grace through faith. But He’s done that also in order to create the dynamic in us for good works. Good works are important to spiritual formation and that’s very important to keep in mind. The problem is when you attach this works to doing the works in order to attain the salvation. This is where the problem comes in, and this has been a difficulty that has shown up in some kinds of theology through the ages. So the issue is that salvation actually comes by grace through faith and sanctification continues that way, but sanctification is about using that grace of God to transform us so that we do the good works that God has prepared for us to do.

Now, there’s a big difference between a spiritual formation that is done in order to gain salvation as opposed to spiritual formation that is done as a result of already having salvation, of already having the grace of God working fully and justifying one purely by grace through faith. The dynamic of one view of spiritual formation with the nature of it being tied to this is how you get salvation is very different from one where you already have salvation and are freely following the dynamic work of God in your life to work that depth of that dynamic grace of God into our lives. So this is a very different kind of thing. If you reverse the order of these things, pretty soon you don’t have the same thing at all. This is a problem that sometimes comes up because of the background of the term spiritual formation as it’s been used through the centuries.

Now another part of this comes out also in a Roman Catholic context in another place. Now, I am not concerned here to be attacking Catholics. That’s not what this is all about. The problem is that a lot of background for spiritual formation does come out of that field and, therefore, has to be thought through in light of belief in the gospel of salvation by grace. So this is not meant to be an attack on Catholics. How many people, Catholics or not, otherwise think that somehow they will get to heaven if they’re good enough—their self-righteousness. This is common across the board in all sorts of different denominational context, so this is not about that, but in the catechism of the Catholic Church there are some things that stand out about this that need to be clarified at the beginning so we don’t misunderstand.

First, in the Catholic catechism on pages that are cited in the notes, it makes much of the fact that justification and even sanctification is by the grace of God alone and our merit derives from the fact that on His own initiative, God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of His grace. This is a very good statement of justification is by grace through faith.

Another page, though, page 542 just following that previous quote that I just mentioned, we read this: “Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit,” and that’s the emphasis in the catechism itself, “we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification for the increase of grace and charity and for the attainment of eternal life.” Now I’ve emphasized that last piece myself to see the connection of how it comes through in the official catechism. The point is that the official Catholic doctrine teaches that grace releases people from the condemnation of the old law and allows them to perform meritorious works worthy of eternal life. That’s really what they’re saying in this. So the problem here is that we have this issue of what to do with this kind of misunderstanding from a biblical point of view, and we need to be aware that that shows up sometimes when you’re talking about spiritual formation in various kinds of theological context. So this is again something we need to be concerned about along the way.

There are certain other spiritualties as well that are not Christian at all, much less biblical. For example, we have this book by James Herrick, The Making of a New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition. The material that he gathers together in here shows that there’s this kind of new Western spirituality that really consists of a set of new spiritualties, some newer than others, but they’re put together in various kinds of combinations, and this is in the air that we breathe, at least in Western culture in the secular world. It’s promoted by powerful forces since the 1700s, the Enlightenment and biblical criticisms and scientific kind of approaches to religion and spirituality, psychoanalytic humanistic spirituality, occult types of spiritualties, Eastern spiritualties combined in with all this and all of this promoted by various forms of media and politics of various kinds. This is a problem that shows up in many different places, and we must not confuse this with biblical spirituality. This is part of Modernity, but also the New Age Movement and Postmodernity makes much of these kinds of spiritualties as well. It’s a mixture of Humanistic and Eastern mystical spiritualties and spiritisms of all sorts and altered states and so on.

The focus in these kinds of spiritualties is on the potential inherent within a person, not on the potential of God’s transforming activity in a person’s life through the Holy Spirit when He brings the gospel to bear in the person’s human spirit. So it’s potential within the person; it’s not coming from God. In this kind of spirituality, they reject the notion that there’s only one way and only one true God and they will argue through personal enlightenment, freedom, and liberation, you can obtain Christian salvation or Buddhist Nirvana or Hindu Sumati. These kinds of things are commonly talked about now in our culture in these days, and this is a serious problem that we have to deal with as we walk into this discussion about spiritual formation as it might be understood by people in the context that we’re in.

Now, therefore, what we’re concerned about here is specifically evangelical spiritual formation. Now the term evangelical derives from the Greek word evangelion, which means gospel or good news. We are committed to the good news of Jesus Christ, trusting in Jesus is the only way to God. John 14:6, for example, Jesus puts it this way: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” Also, in Acts 4:12, it’s put in another way where the apostles say when they are being confronted about preaching Christ and told not to preach Him. They say in Acts 4:12, “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” So there’s this basic foundation that comes out in these passages and many other passages that there is this good news that comes and that good news is found in Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ alone. This is the way God has provided. This is one of the things that makes our mission so important is that people need to know or they are lost and lost eternally.

Now, perhaps a good way to clarify this and to talk about evangelical in terms of spiritual formation is to quote from a well-known, again, Catholic writer in this field of spiritual formation. His name is Henri Nouwen. He has a book that he wrote; it is the last book that he wrote called Sabbatical Journey. He wrote in that book November 10, 1995 an entry about a particular meeting he had. Now this meeting was with a group called The Gathering. This is a group of evangelical Christians to whom he spoke about giving in the spirit of the gospel. They wanted to know about their endeavors of giving and how to do it in a way that’s truly pleasing to God. And in this discussion, what he does is he works through his engagement with them in reflecting upon it, and this is what he writes and this is again a journal entry in this book. It starts on page 51. He reflects that this group of evangelical believers believe that “without an explicit personal profession of faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we cannot make it to heaven.” This is quoting Henri Nouwen here. “They are convinced that God has called us to convert every human being to Jesus. Their love for Jesus is deep. It’s intense and radical. They are very committed disciples, not hesitant to pay the cost of discipleship.” So he begins by making that very clarified, very clear statement of how he understands what it is about them that makes them evangelicals. Now quite frankly, I couldn’t do much better than that myself in terms of what an evangelical really is and what it really means to live the Christian faith in this “based on the gospel” sort of way. Evangelical coming from the word gospel—evangelion. So it’s a very good statement, it seems to me, in the way that he’s put it together there.

Now, many of you have heard perhaps of Henri Nouwen. He’s written a lot and he’s a very important person to read. He’s a good writer and he talks deeply about Christian spirituality. But in the following paragraphs in this book, he goes on to write this; as he was with them, he writes: “I felt somewhat uncomfortable, even though this belief was present in my own upbringing.” So he feels uncomfortable in the midst of these people, even though he feels like it’s there in his upbringing at least to some degree. Then he goes on, “My conviction as a young man was that there’s no salvation outside the Catholic Church and that it was my task to bring all nonbelievers into the one true church.” Now you notice the focus there on church, not specifically on the gospel, but on the church as the way, so it’s a very Catholic kind of statement, and he sees it as analogous to what the evangelicals would believe that he’s dealing with in these times.

Now it’s not probably something that we would say. We would not say it in that way. That’s a particularly Roman Catholic way of putting it. Now he goes on though and he says, he goes further: “Today I personally believe that while Jesus came to open the door to God’s house, all human beings can walk through that door whether they know about Jesus or not. Today I see it as my call to help every person claim his or her own way to God.” Now, this is a Catholic priest who is writing heavily on spiritual formation and on Christian spiritual formation, but he doesn’t believe you need to know Jesus in order to really be accepted by God. So you’re going to run into these mixes in the literature. That’s what I’m trying to get at here, and not just in Catholic literature, but all sorts of literature in spiritual formation. That’s why doing the biblical theology of it is pivotal to actually doing this in a way that’s pleasing to God according to His Word.

Now he goes on and says this: “I feel deeply called to witness for Jesus as the One who is the source of my own spiritual journey and thus create the possibility for other people to know Jesus and commit themselves to Him.” So he still witnesses to Jesus. That’s his way. He goes on, “I am so truly convinced that the Spirit of God is present in our midst and that each person can be touched by God’s Spirit in ways far beyond my own comprehension and intention.” Now, we all believe that, but how does the Holy Spirit do that touching? What is that touching about? Well according to the Bible, it’s about Jesus, and Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and there is no other way. This is part of the problem with what’s happening here in this discussion. But again, Henri Nouwen is one of the well-known writers in this field. He’s coming out of a very wonderful service to severely handicapped people, and I think he’s working out of that to some degree, but he’s also working out of some shifts, and in some ways what he’s saying here is not even Catholic.

Now moving on, there’s a couple other things I want to talk about from an evangelical point of view. One of the issues that we need to be concerned about is a problem that sometimes arises in this field with regard to a kind of a gnostic or elitist mystical spirituality and perfectionism, versus what I would call biblical spirituality in spiritual formation. This can become a rather severe problem.

In some contexts, spiritual formation has sometimes degenerated into a search for a mystical form of gnostic or elitist spirituality or perfectionism, and this has become something that I’ve observed in certain places. Now, first with regard to the notion of it being mystical. It’s probably more mystical than some ways of talking about growth in Christ; for example, disciple and sanctification. Because it deals with actually how the Holy Spirit works, and we’ll actually see passages in the Bible that talk about the Holy Spirit in a rather mystical sort of way. Jesus does this with Nicodemus, for example, and we’ll come back to that and talk about it. So there’s a proper Christian Mysticism, but sometimes it can be overdone so that there’s a certain kind of mysticism that is not really proper Christian Mysticism about the way the Holy Spirit works, and so we need to be concerned about that. Probably the strength of spiritual formation is in this calling upon God for His power through the work of the Holy Spirit. And in that way it takes us in this mystical direction to some degree. Then, however, with discipleship, for example. Disciple is a perfectly good word and so is sanctification, they are perfectly good words. But in some contexts, for example, discipleship is related more to kind of a rigorous kind of rule focused kind of Christianity rather than on the dynamic of relationship with walking with Jesus. And so in depending on how people reacting in different places, these terms can be one better than the other and it’s all depending on the perspective of the particular person. But spiritual formation does get into this dynamic, this empowerment, this actual active work of God in a dynamic powerful way in the human spirit. And, again, we’ll see more about that later, but sometimes we have a problem with kind of an overly mystical form of this or we can have a problem with perfectionism.

For example, at the end of Matthew 5 within the Sermon on the Mount, there’s this expression that I think has been quite often misunderstood. Matthew 5:48, “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Now that can be taken and misunderstood. What needs to be understood in the context is that what He’s talking about is starting with verse 43,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy’. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?”

People who don’t know the Lord can love people who love them. That’s what He’s saying. That’s not the issue. The question is whether you can love people who don’t love you. If you can love your enemy, that’s what makes you like your Father in heaven since He sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous and so on. Verse 47, “If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That expression in verse 48 is about loving your enemy. That’s what makes you perfect like your Father if you can love your enemy just like the Father does. So this is the kind of thing that can be misunderstood and so there’s people who kind of talk in a kind perfectionist way when you get into this material, and there are other passages that apply to this as well. We are to grow toward becoming like the Father, and as we do this, He perfects us, but we do never become perfect. So perfectionism can become a problem in this context and so we need to be concerned about that.

Biblical spirituality is above all practical. It is for every Christian. Even the apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians 3:1, “But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh (sarkikos),” is the word here, “as infants in Christ.” He was exhorting all the Christians at Corinth to pursue true spirituality. This is what the Lord wants to do.

Now in I Thessalonians, for example, there’s a helpful passage here. I Thessalonians chapter 3, we begin in chapter 3, but what I’m really after is a unity in chapter 4. Chapter 3, verse 11 in I Thessalonians: “Now may our God and Father Himself and Jesus our Lord direct our way to you; and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people, just as we also do for you; so that He may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints,” with all these holy ones there. Now that’s the end of chapter 3. He goes on then in the earlier part of chapter 4 to talk about the importance of dealing with your own lusts and those kinds of things in a way that mortifies them and that you don’t live in the way the ungodly do. Then in chapter 4, verse 9, “Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another,” so this is one of the things that makes you spiritual, is really loving one another, “for indeed you do practice it toward all the brethren that are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more, and to make it your ambition,” now this is important, “to lead a quiet life and attend your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need.” This is an ambitious Christian life, to live a quiet life, attending to your life properly, handling things well, working and behaving properly toward outsiders, not having needs, and things like this. The point is that there’s this ambition that is a true spirituality that’s for every Christian, and it’s important to understand this is belonging to the life of the common every day Christian in the work-a-day world.

Spiritual formation is actually giving us an opportunity here in the evangelical world to develop a kind of unified pursuit of true godliness, of life and effectiveness of ministry together in the church worldwide. There’s the history of the church since the New Testament days and that includes the story of Christian spirituality. Unfortunately, when you read through the history of the church and the history of spirituality, it’s a mixed bag of principles and practices some of which fit well under the umbrella of biblical spirituality and spiritual formation and some of which do not.

There’s a very good history written by Gordon Russell, The Story of Christian Spirituality, and you can see how much of a mixed bag this really is as you look at this book and read through it. It’s well illustrated and it really can help you to understand. There’s other things out there as well that are very useful here.

We are, of course, concerned here with recognizing and making use of all that is of value in these traditions or streams of historical spirituality. There’s a book by Bruce Demarest, again, this is in the notes, Satisfy Your Soul. It’s a very good discerning summary of the historical ways of thinking about spirituality and the resources for them from an evangelical point of view. So we look at these various things. I myself have found great benefit, for example, in meditating my way through Thomas a’Kempis, The Imitation of Christ. This is a Monastic order that is reflecting its kind of way of coming at, pursuing spirituality. So there’s all sorts of different useful resources—Teresa of Avila—various different kinds of resources from the Desert Fathers and all sorts of things like that. There were, in fact, quite a number of reformation movements within the Catholic Church before the Reformation, and this is important.

Now I’ve made it clear in this lecture that the Reformation was about something. It was important. But the church did not start with the Reformation. The church began with Christ and what He did and then the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, and that worked on through the whole two millennia now that the church has existed. So we need to pay attention to things that may not be in the vein that we’re used to, but very useful nevertheless for our life in pursuing Christ, even from the history of the church.

These lectures, however, focus on a whole Bible approach to spiritual formation—Old Testament and New Testament. We’re interested in collecting things and using the entire Bible to understand what spirituality is all about. We’re interested in collecting what is good and beneficial from this history of spirituality and arranging it under the umbrella of a focused, biblical spirituality.