CHRISTIAN FORMATION

• Our formation as Christians is most fundamentally the growth of our love for God (i.e. Dt 6:4-5; Mt 22:34-40). 

• Our deepest loves govern how we live (i.e. Gen 3:6; Lk 6:45; Rom 13:9; Gal 5:14; 1 Tim 6:10; 2 Jn 1:6; James 2:8).

• Our loves are always a response to something we deem desirable in the objects of our love. As such, our love for God is always a response to his initiation, without which we would never love him (i.e. Rom 6:15-23; Jn 3:16; 1 Jn 4:19).

• Our love for God grows as the Holy Spirit reveals more of the glory of God to us, finding its greatest expression in the person and work of Jesus (the Gospel) (i.e. Jn 15:26, 16:13-15; 2 Cor 3:18; Col 1:15; 1 Jn 4:9-10).

• The Spirit commonly communicates more of Jesus to us through regular rhythms of Bible Intake and Prayer, Corporate Worship, Christian Community and Doctrinal Formation (i.e. Acts 2:42-47; 2 Tim 3:16; Heb 13:16; Col 3:1-17; Rom 12:1).

Adam and Eve were created very good and with rightly ordered loves – they loved the right things in the right order. They enjoyed fulfillment of their loves in the Garden of Eden (literally, the Garden of Pleasure).

Their love of God was fulfilled by God’s intimate presence. Adam’s love for a partner was fulfilled in Eve. Their love of good work was fulfilled in their tending of the garden.

However, tragically their rightly ordered loves became disordered (loving the wrong things or the right things but in the wrong order). Their lives of holiness and perfect communion with God were shattered by sin, resulting in alienation.

The introduction of disordered loves (by the Serpent) and the living out of disordered loves (the Fall) spread disordered loves to every human ever born thereafter (total depravity).

Only by God’s initiation and saving work can a human heart ever love him and thus begin to have rightly ordered loves (a lifelong process). This means every human action before saving grace is most deeply motivated by a disordered love and thus unable to please God (we are born as enemies of God and spiritually dead).

Because every action we take and every decision we make is always governed by our most deeply held loves, we are never free to choose something contrary to those deepest loves. Therefore, we are always a slave to our loves, from birth to death.

Christ-bought freedom is the grace to act in accordance with loves that are being rightly ordered by the Spirit (the process of sanctification). Because of Jesus, no longer are we slaves only to loves that lead to death (the human condition), but we are freed to loves that lead to life (work of the Spirit)!

The eternal hope of the Christian is fully enjoying God forever by having loves that are wholly rightly ordered, similar to Adam and Eve at creation but most ultimately like Jesus (being conformed into the image of the Son). This is the ultimate Christian prize that begins imperfectly at conversion, grows over the course of the Christian life, and finds fulfillment in eternity – restored perfect communion with God himself forever!

The Christian life is NOT primarily about doing more of the right things and less of the wrong things, but about growing in enjoyment of God himself, which shapes our loves which govern our actions.

Focusing primarily upon OUR behavior, OUR feelings, OUR thoughts, OUR struggles is counter-productive – it takes our focus off of the only One to whom our hearts respond with a growing right love and thus obedience.

Intentionally being attentive to the Spirit is absolutely crucial. This requires us to slow down and make head and heart space. It is his job to communicate to us Jesus – the clearest expression of the very thing to which our hearts most greatly respond with a growing love for God!

It is possible to idolize good things rather than using them as means to a greater end – ie Bible, prayer, service, community, common grace gifts, etc. For example, it is possible to make becoming a better student of the Bible or a person who regularly prays as the goal rather than becoming a student of the Bible and a person who regularly prays as ways to more deeply know and love God.

Our formation includes both individual essential rhythms (i.e. times of personal Bible intake, prayer, doctrinal formation) and gathered essential rhythms (ie corporate worship, Christian community and times of group Bible intake, prayer and doctrinal formation).

Not “feeling the right emotions / motives” should not paralyze us from engaging in the rhythms, but motivate us to engage with the hope that the rhythm by God’s grace will shape our emotions / motives in the right way.

We should not expect deep formation if we engage in the rhythms sporadically at best. We should also not expect deep formation instantaneously.

Busyness / constant activity / always producing are formidable enemies of our formation. Sabbath is a gift God gives us in the battle. In our formation we are not primary producers but receivers.