Imagine yourself as being of sound mind with a genius-like intellect and wisdom beyond your years. Imagine that you are also a person of unlimited creativity and incredible understanding whose mind is able to process detailed concepts in a variety of subjects. You are a person of “know how.” You are a person who seemingly has all the answers. You, however, have one major flaw that keeps you from achieving all of the things in which your mind can conceive. Your body is completely paralyzed!
Dallas Willard wrote, “The human body was made to be the vehicle of the human personality ruling the earth for God through his power. Withdrawn from that function by loss of its connection with God, the body is caught in the inevitable state of corruption in which we find it now.”[i] Much like a life in which the body is paralyzed but the mind is fully functional, is the Christian who attempts to have a full life in the Spirit yet neglects to discipline the body in which the Spirit dwells. In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul explains that it is in giving our “bodies” sacrificially unto the Lord for His purposes, that we can come to enter into a true “act of worship” (Romans 12:1). The “sacrifice” that the Lord requires is one that the body is diametrically opposed to in function and purpose. As it craves only to please itself with the allurement of this world, in God’s economy, the body must be sacrificed through self-discipline to deny what it desires and to embrace its purpose for the kingdom of God (see Ephesians 4:17-20). It is only through understanding the body’s role in the spiritual life that one can come to apprehend the necessary disciplines which spiritual formation requires.
Sacrifice, in a modern sense, can be described as the giving up of something costly or valuable in regards to a religious expression of worship. Generally, when one thinks of “sacrifice,” images of a helpless creature bound on a slab of rock awaiting a gruesome and violent death comes to mind. Once the knife has been plunged into the victim and its blood spilled upon the ground, the sacrificial ritual temporarily ends until the demands of one’s religion calls for another act of appeasement. For those who serve the Lord, however, sacrifice takes on a much different meaning. Although the Old Testament system of worship called for the sacrificial system as a tangible act of repentance and obedience, the reality of sacrifice was to remind the people of God that true sacrifice involved not just the giving up of one’s possessions, but the giving of one’s life for the sake of worshiping the Lord.
The major question that surrounds the idea of “spiritual formation” is “What must one do in order to obtain a Christ-like life?” It is certain that becoming like Christ isn’t something that just “happens” nor is it a result of making up one’s own conclusion as to what becoming like Christ requires. Too often, the idea of sacrifice for the Christian is practiced more as a concept than it is a way of life. The spirit may be willing but the “body is weak” (Mark 14:38). Although the Lord knows that we as humans live in a fallen state in which our bodies take on corruption, He, in light of His “mercy,” has made it possible for the body to live in submission to the spiritual disciplines. In essence, Romans 12:1 admonishes us to make our “whole person” something that can be presented for the purposes of entering into the worship relationship with God.[ii]
From a personal experience, I can attest to my failure in making my life a “living sacrifice” for the Lord. For several years, I had struggled with the issue of fear in my life. It became such an issue in my life that it eventually led to anxiety and panic attacks on a routine basis. Eventually, it destroyed my ministry and my marriage. As I ventured upon the road to restoration in my life, I continued in my battle with fear. Although I came to the place where I was once again in ministry, fear continued to keep me from fulfilling the will of the Lord for my life. Rather than sacrificing my concerns to the Lord, I gave them over to fear. Last year, at a silent prayer retreat, the Lord revealed to me about the importance of “building His temple.” He showed me that each time I refused to discipline my mind and body in regards to fear, it was like removing a stone from His temple; however, if I would bring my body into submission to what His power and presence offers my life, I would continue to become a vessel in which His glory could be revealed; thus, living in the will of the Lord for my life.
As Paul said, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world…” which in light of spiritual formation denotes for one to deny what is naturally responsive in our flesh. Rather, the apostle says that we must “be transformed by the renewing of my mind” which suggests that a new way of thinking about and responding to life must take place. In order for us to come to know that Lord as He desires us to know Him, in living in “His good, pleasing, and perfect will,” we must discipline ourselves to “sacrifice” our natural tendencies and adopt a habitual response to life through the work of Christ that has been accomplished in us. If we cannot do that, then in reality, we cannot truly worship the Lord as our flesh will constantly remain at the forefront of all that we do. As Oswald Chambers eloquently said, “What I must decide is whether or not I will agree with my Lord and Master that my body will indeed be His temple.”[iii]
Just as we must become vessels of discipline which displays the life of Christ in our whole person, so must we maintain a disciplined life which reflects Christ in the world in which we live. Ephesians 4:17-20 suggests that the way of life for a Christian must be separate in every way from those who live without Christ. As we present ourselves as “living sacrifices” to the Lord, He requires that the sacrifice be one that is “holy and pleasing” to Him. Holiness requires separation from the common and the embracing of the sacred. The type of separation in which the Lord requires from us is not only found in the “transforming of our minds” but is also found in not “living as the Gentiles do…” For spiritual formation to be a reality in our lives, we have to first recognize our body’s tendency to indulge our appetite for life. The act of worship must include an understanding that the Christian life implies that “there are attitudes and activities that are definitely not pleasing to God.”[iv] This is where discipline is needed as from a natural standpoint; consequently, we will always have the tendency to gravitate towards indulging our flesh. Again, Paul suggests that to avoid this, it must begin with our “thinking” (Eph. 4:17).
If failing to discipline the body can keep us from the desired life of spiritual formation then the life that surrounds the body can be equally effective in diminishing the life of Christ in us. If we allow the allure of the world to entice our desires, then in one sense, we make a mockery of the work of Christ in us (“For you however, did not come to know Christ this way”). Not only are we called to live a disciplined life but also a separated life----separated from the ideology, philosophy, psychology, and society of the worldly perspective. Ungodly people can live morally disciplined lives; however, they cannot live separated unto the Lord. In other words, one can live disciplined and not separated in this world but one cannot live separated without the discipline to do so. Paul gives us a simple reminder concerning our spiritual formation in Ephesians 4:17-20: We cannot know Christ if we choose to live a life un-separated from this world.
To put all of this into perspective, imagine the paralyzed body once again. However, it is not your body that cannot function as it should but your child’s. You look at this little life before you and you dream as to what it could become----if only. You see your child running through a field on a cool autumn day with a kite trailing behind flapping in the gusting wind. You see the smile on the beautiful face as your dog trips him up and the two of them wrestle around in a pile of leaves. You return the smile because you are grateful for the one thing that matters: your child is experiencing life as he should, unhindered and unbridled.
Spiritual formation is the difference between a life that is paralyzed and a life that is experiencing everything that a child of God should. Where does it begin? What must we do to move beyond a life of paralysis and begin to truly live? The answer is simple, yet difficult. It requires of us sacrifice and separation. In quoting Willard, “ Anything with life in it can flourish only if it abandons itself to what lies beyond it (sacrifice), eventually to be lost as a separate being, through continuing to live on in relation to others. Life is inner power to reach and live ‘beyond.”[1] The “beyond” that we must strive for is the life offered to us in Christ. A life of true worship and relationship in knowing God “beyond” anything we could ever conceive is made possible through the pathway of “sacrifice” and “separation.” The only question that we need to answer is if we are willing to exchange the life of paralyzed living for a life that is able to “reach and live beyond?”
[i] Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), 42.
[ii] John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 110.
[iii] Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest (Grand Rapids: Discovery House, 1992), 355.
[iv] David Peterson, Engaging With God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 17.
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