Spiritual Formation Flashcards
How do we know that Christian life is not fundamentally about being moral in itself or being a “good boy or girl”
Galatians 3:1-3
1 Oh, foolish Galatians! Who has cast an evil spell on you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross. 2 Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. 3 How foolish can you be? After starting your new lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?
Galatians 3:6-9
6 So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”[a]
7 Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. 8 Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”[b] 9 So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
What is moral temptation?
Moral Temptation
The attempt of the hidden heart (not conscious) to try to perfect oneself in the power of the self, the attempt to use formation, the spiritual disciplines, being good, etc., to relieve the burden of spiritual failure, lack of love, and the guilt and shame that results. To try to relieve that burden that Christ alone can relieve
No amount of effort can ever relieve our burden of shame and guilt, except Christ
How do you know that you are a Christian moralist?
Two tests
Guilt test - whenever you are convicted by sin, if your first and abiding response is “God I will do better”, “God I will work on that”, then you are in the grip of temptation to fix yourself by effort
Failure test - whenever the awareness of our moral failure, sin, and guilt result in overwhelming and abiding feelings of frustration, sense of failure, self-rejection so that one does not want to feel these things and represses them. The moralist cannot bear the awareness of the truth of their inner motivation
What are the purpose of spiritual disciplines
Spiritual disciplines do not grow you,
The spiritual formation is not about …
being good
character development
character imitation (What would Jesus do?)
We have been saved from that life, of trying to be good
It is about participation in a new life, about being changed by Christ, it’s opening up to what Christ is doing in you
It is an effort of opening the heart to a new relationship, of participating in the vine
The Christian life is about denouncing the moral life as a way to find happiness, and as a way to please God.
What happened to the people in Galatians 3:1-3
They started off living the life of the spirit, but then something happened to tempt them towards moralism.
Why would any Christian be tempted to be moral, isn’t the temptation to be immoral?
Morality is humanity’s most common way of trying to deal with feelings of guilt and shame without God.
We ineherited this legalism from Adam and Eve attempted to deal with their guilt and shame, by trying to cover themselves with fig leaves.
The instinct of moralism is that when you become aware of your sin:
- you immediately turn inward and say “What do I need to do?”, and try to cover your sin, in order to try and look good. (Gen 3:7)
- Hide from guilt and God and blame others (Gen 3:7)
Christians try to cover deep feelings of shame over spiritual failures by trying to be good, by regimens of formation, and to hide from feelings of failure and guilt by repression of the truth of oneself and unwillingness to experience one’s failure.
Who is easier to win over into the kingdom of heaven, The pharisee or the Harlot?
The Harlot, because, unlike the pharisee, the harlot doesn’t think that they are good.
Prayer is not …
A place to fix yourself, to be pretentious, to be good…
Prayer is a place to be honest, to come out of your hiding,
What was the purpose of the Law
The Law was a tutor whose purpose was to lead us to our need for Christ, to awaken our conscience to the fact that we can’t do it. That we need Christ to do it for us.
Gal 3:23-25
23 Before the way of faith in Christ was available to us, we were placed under guard by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, until the way of faith was revealed.
24 Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. 25 And now that the way of faith has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian.
What is the moment of awareness of our own moral failure.
the moment of awareness of our own bad is the door that opens to the love of Christ.
Thomas Keating - “Nothing is more helpful to reduce pride than the actual experience of self-knowledge”
What should our first response be to our awareness of our own sinfulness?
Not “I will do better?”
but “God I need you?”
John 15:5-6
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.
Sanctification recapitulates salvation
Everything that happened at our salvation is only going to deepen in our growth and sanctification.
Sanctification is a different ground from Salvation, it deepens it.
During salvation we became aware of our “bad” and or “need” for christ which led us to respond to Christ, In the process of growth, we are going to be taken more deeply into your sin.
Teresa of Avila
We need to learn to sit amongst our weeds
The weeds are our sins, and Jesus is the gardener. We have a tendency to try and pull our own weeds, but when we do, they just grow right back.
We need to stop trying to fix ourselves and open up to God. Apart from God we can do nothing.
God gave us many abillities except for the abillity to fix our bad. We can’t do it.
