Redeemer Family,
Over the past few weeks I’ve found myself in numerous conversations about the first phrase in Redeemer’s Vision, “Gospel Formation.” As I’ve listened, I’ve heard some confusion on what exactly Gospel Formation is and is not. Is it something God does? Is it something we do? How can you tell if it’s happening?
Strange as it might sound, I’ve actually been delighted to hear that this phrase is not obviously and immediately understandable. I know that I like most things in my life to fall neatly into my ready-made categories and I grow frustrated with anything that doesn’t fit neatly with everything I already believe and practice. However, the very definition of a change-agent is something that very much does not fit with what I already believe and practice. A change-agent disrupts. This is, of course, initially uncomfortable. But all true change begins this way.
So let’s seek clarity together, what is Gospel Formation?
GOSPEL: In Jesus Christ, God takes his creation—which has, because of sin, fallen into ruin—and redemptively restores it in every part, until the time of consummation, in which all things will at last be made new.
FORMATION: The intentional adoption of practices and habits in order to re-shape one’s internal life with God and self and one’s external life with others and the world.
We’ll take them one at a time. First, Gospel:
The Gospel is the good news about what God has done. The Gospel includes the good news of personal salvation that Jesus offers through His death and resurrection, but it is so much more than that. Often presentations of the Gospel leave off the bookends of Creation and New Creation. The Gospel includes the good news that God made this world for good and that He has promised to restore and renew all things in a New Creation. The Gospel therefore, is more than good news for individuals, it is good news for the whole world.
So here at Redeemer we behold the Gospel whenever we open a Bible and read from scripture. We believe the theology of the Gospel intellectually. We receive the good news of the Gospel in our hearts. We know that it is only by the Gospel that we are made right with God, right with ourselves, right with one another, and right with the world.
The Gospel is an unmerited gift of grace. It is God’s unconditional love given to us through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.
And what do you do with a gift? You simply receive it with a grateful heart.
Now, Formation:
Ah, but what does a gift do to you? Well it depends on the size of the gift and the size of your need. A free new car means nothing to a billionaire, but a glass of cold water means everything to a child dying of thirst in the desert.
If we grasp the magnitude of our need for God and the magnitude of His love for us, then the gift of the Gospel becomes life-changing. We can never go back to the way things were before. Every aspect of our lives must reorient around this gift.
This is where formation comes into play. Christian Formation is the re-orienting of the whole self in response to the good news of the Gospel. It is intentional whole-life/whole-person transformation, top to bottom, inside out.
This is what the apostle Paul was getting at when he wrote Romans 12:1-2:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
The word that our English Bibles translate as “transformed” is metamorphousthe from which we get our contemporary word metamorphosis - describing a creature that completely changes from one kind to another. The most vivid example we have of this is a caterpillar into a butterfly.
But Formation is not something that just happens to us that we passively accept. Rather, it is something that requires our active participation. Formation requires intentionality, effort, will power, time, hard labor, accountability, and much more. Formation is never completed in this life, though we may make real progress.
Q: So what is Gospel Formation?
A: It is the convergence of God’s work and our work. The Gospel is God’s work on our behalf. Formation is our response, our participation in our own transformation, our own metamorphosis.
This requires rejecting “either/or thinking” and embracing “both/and thinking.” This is difficult and it does not fall neatly into my (or anyone else’s) pre-existing categories.
Gospel Formation is a challenge to those who love the good news of God’s grace, but struggle with words like: “obedience,” “discipline,” “law,” or “duty.”
Gospel Formation is a challenge to those who love clear action items and manageable to-do lists, but struggle with words like: “gift,” “grace,” “free,” or “acceptance.”
The Gospel without Formation is a cheap gift that leaves you unchanged. Ultimately it’s a form of ingratitude.
Formation without the Gospel is a new form of religious law that ultimately leaves the person crushed by their inability to practice it well or prideful in their false assumption that they have arrived.
We must, MUST hold these together.
The story of the Bible holds them together beautifully.
The lives of the Saints, the faithful men and women throughout church history, illustrate this tension beautifully.
Redeemer Family, let’s be people who both receive and are transformed by the Gospel.
Let’s revel in our freedom and let’s get to work on changing.
Let’s rest in the peace of God’s love and rise to labor in obedience.
Let’s embrace the metamorphosis that God is enacting in us through Jesus.
In the Father’s love,
