Where Spiritual Formation Goes Wrong: Laying Burdens Where God Declares Freedom
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At twelve years old, I sat in my room to admire my neatly typed and printed checklist: the God Girl Checklist. I finally found it—a list of habits, characteristics, and tasks to do to make me the best Christian I could be. After reading a thick, hardcover book for teen girls on how to be a “God girl,” I developed this checklist that I kept tucked away in my desk drawer.
As I grew up, I eventually saw the silliness of having a checklist, but I still carried along with me this idea of rituals, habits, and practices that I believed were essential for my sanctification (growth in holiness). Many of these would fall under the category of spiritual formation.
If you attended a Christian college like me, you probably had a class on spiritual formation. Many Christian “influencers” are becoming spiritual directors or touting the wonders of spiritual formation. Books are being recommended and published throughout the Christian market on spiritual disciplines. Spiritual formation is trending in churches. We’re exhorted to seek solitude, journal towards holiness, go on nature walks to connect with God, and take extended periods of silence to listen and clear our minds. Do all these practices and more, they say, to grow closer to God and be holy.
Dear reader, please hear this question in the kindest, gentlest tone: Are these items of spiritual formation or spiritual discipline any different from my twelve-year-old “God Girl” checklist? Do they both miss the same theological and even practical mark that the Bible lays out for us?
Who sanctifies us?
When people discuss spiritual formation, we hear lists and directions for growing in holiness and experiencing God’s presence. By memorizing a certain biblical chapter on worry, we will stop feeling fearful. By submitting ourselves to silence and solitude, we will learn self-control. By journaling, we will stop sinful tendencies of anger and gossip.
Yet, Scripture tells us that our sinful nature is too strong, too intertwined and embedded in our hearts for us to pull it out on our own. It’s like trying to pull a briar bush out of a garden with no gloves on. Writing to the Colossians, Paul explains that these kinds of practices “have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Col. 2:20–23).
We need the Holy Spirit to renew and sanctify us. We begin by the Spirit, and we are perfected by the Spirit in Christ (Gal. 3:1–6). As theologian Michael Horton writes,
We do not find some gifts, like justification, in Christ and then other gifts, like sanctification, in ourselves or even in the Spirit apart from Christ. In the same act of faith, one is justified and renewed. These are distinct gifts that must never be confused, but they are given together—with every other blessing—through faith in Christ.[1]
Only by being hidden in Christ do we receive the Holy Spirit, who then chisels away our sins and carves us into godliness.
The Holy Spirit isn’t a power with which God endows us; rather, he is a divine Person of the Trinity residing in us. He’s not a force we learn to harness; rather, he is God himself indwelling us, comforting us, and carving us into Christ’s likeness. This is much greater news! You’re not left on your own to muster up enough strength to make yourself holy or bridle some mysterious force through specific rituals. You have the Third Person of the Trinity in your heart making you holy.
Where does the Spirit work?
As we trust the Holy Spirit to sanctify us, we need to consider how he promises to do his work of chiseling and cutting—through the means of grace. The means of grace are the ordinary, God-ordained practices through which he has promised to communicate his grace. While spiritual disciplines are often about what we do and what we contribute, the beauty of the means of grace is that they are all about receiving. We sit to receive Scripture as it is preached, we are baptized by a pastor, and we are given the Lord’s Supper. In this way, the means of grace remind us of the gospel, which we receive through faith by grace.
When we add our own commandments to God’s law, we’re no better than the Pharisees who Jesus condemned throughout his earthly ministry. And when we neglect the ways God promises to work in our lives and instead rely on our own rituals and habits, we’re forfeiting the beautiful, ordinary means of grace to which he calls us.
God gives us Scripture as a means of grace.
The Bible tells us that God works through his powerful word:
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Heb. 4:12)
Paul directed Timothy:
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:14–17)
David likewise describes God’s word as perfect, reviving, sure, making the simple wise, rejoicing our hearts, enduring, and enlightening (Ps. 19:7–13).
The Bible should have priority in our lives, and we know the Spirit promises to work in this way. But we need to be careful that we don’t set up laws around it where the Bible doesn’t. God doesn’t tell us how often, at what time, or in what way to approach his word—only that we should treasure it in our hearts (Ps. 119:11), handle it rightly (2 Tim. 2:15), sing it to one another (Col. 3:16), and hear it preached (Rom. 10:17).
God gives us baptism as a means of grace.
While there are debates about what baptism should look like, we can’t deny the importance God places on it. Our baptism (and watching the baptism of others) is a way that God communicates his grace to us in a physical fashion—by the means of baptism God demonstrates his promise to cleanse us and enliven our hope (1 Pet. 3:21–22). “Baptism is a visual confirmation of God’s act of communicating his covenant promise. It achieves its effect when and where the Spirit chooses.”[2]
God gives us the Lord’s Supper as a means of grace.
Communion, the Lord’s Supper, is another physical sign God gives his children to remind us of and communicate his grace. As we partake of the bread and wine, we remember Christ’s death for us and long for heaven’s greater feast to come:
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Cor. 11:26)
This meal is meant to unite us with Christ, and also unite us with our fellow siblings in Christ. In this we are drawn to his presence, and our love for one another is revived by the Holy Spirit.
God gives us fellowship to build up the body of Christ.
God promises to work through his church—the body of believers, Christ’s bride—to teach, encourage, correct, and refine us:
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Heb. 10:24–25)
Where we may be only an eye (limited by our experience, upbringing, physical abilities, and resources), he gives us people who are hands, feet, and ears (1 Cor. 12:12–31).
While there are times when fellowship with other believers is prevented (sickness, pandemics, crises, having a newborn, etc.), it’s important not to neglect physical connection and communion with our siblings in Christ. Fellowship happens not just by showing up to church each Sunday, shaking hands, and walking out but also by inviting people into our lives to bear our burdens and guide us in godliness. This means letting them see the dirt and mess in our lives and welcoming their care and help.
Some practices are good but not essential.
Many of the tools discussed in books on spiritual formation are good—even healthy and beneficial—habits to adapt. There is nothing wrong or anti-biblical about taking twenty minutes a day to turn off your devices to be alone with your thoughts. No sin is committed when we choose to pray as we walk through the woods. Journaling can be a healthy exercise for processing what we’re thinking, learning, and struggling with, and much better than oversharing on social media. Daily Bible reading, meditation, and memorization are all tools for hiding God’s word away in our hearts (Ps. 119:11), growing in discernment (Acts 17:10–12), and preparing ourselves to have an answer ready for any who ask (1 Pet. 3:14–16).
Where we go wrong is by carving these practices into stone as if they were laws—for ourselves or others. When we claim or believe that holiness will only be achieved if we read our Bibles every day, journal, and seek solitude and silence, we’re adding to God’s law (Rev. 22:18–19). We’re also putting sanctification in human hands rather than entrusting it to the Holy Spirit. Both are perilous traps for any believer. We are to cling to Christ and his word, not man-made laws. Where Jesus declares us free, let us not restrain; and where he calls us to obedience, let us follow with gratitude.
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Notes:
[1] Michael Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2012), 304.
[2] Ibid, 368.
