Spiritual formation is the process of becoming more and more like Jesus every day. It is the singular goal of the Christian life. Becoming a disciples and becoming spiritually mature are simply terms to describe this process along the way towards this one ultimate goal.
In Genesis, God created humanity with one goal in mind. He said in Gen 1:26
"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." (ESV)
God's image does not mean some kind of physical image of course, since God does not have a physical body. He refers to the spiritual and psychological image of God--the ability to think, feel, act, imagine, plan, and co-create with God.
The image of Christ is the image of God expressed in His fullness in human form. Spiritual formation is the restoration of what we were meant to be from the first.
Faith is more than simply believing. It is as Tillich put it, our "ultimate concern." It is the truth in which we live, move and have our being.
Christians were created not just to have faith in Christ, but to have the faith of Christ--that is, to share with Christ the same ultimate concern that He had. As He believed, so should we believe; as He felt, so should we feel; as He acted, so should we act, etc. His ultimate concern was His Father, just as our ultimate concern is Christ.
In Ephesians 4:13, Paul spells out the purpose of the church this way--Gen 1:26
"until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ," (ESV)
There are, of course, many ways of describing what is meant by the "the fullness of Christ."
The faith matrix demonstrates this along four axes, or balanced dimensions of growth. These axes are
1. The Perception axis--including reason and passion. This is the way we come to understand the God and the world around us. We experience the world objectively and subjectively, by what we grasp with our minds and what we feel in our hearts.
2. The Service axis--including submission and action. This is how we act in our relationships with God and with the world. We first act in humble submission to God, yielding our will to Him and being still before him. We also express our relationship with God in the world by doing His will in all things, developing habits of love, faith-sharing and forgiveness, assisting into the transformation of human society into the Kingdom of God.
3. The Awareness axis--including self-awareness and community. This is how we see our relationship to the world around us as Christ saw His. He was complete in Himself, but he was also connected to others. Like Him, we learn to see ourselves as differentiated from other people, and are able to be comfortable alone, as well as seeing ourselves connected to other people of faith.
4. The Time axis--including heritage and hope. This is how we see ourselves connected to the God and the world over time. Like Christ, we become aware that we are part of the long history of the God's people in covenant with Him, and respect the heritage of the past. At the same time, we understand we are part of a future hope. We are able to draw from the treasury of historical godliness, but are hopeful for he ultimate realization of a better world ahead.
The faith matrix is an exploration of how these eight dimensions are related to each other, and interact with each other. the ultimate goal of growing into Christ's image is to become more like Christ in all eight dimensions.
To help explore this, I have written the book The Faith Matrix, and have started this blog. As time goes on, I hope to explore more of these concepts here, and to include readers thoughts and ideas on how to encourage growth in all eight of these dimensions. I welcome contributions and criticisms
While perfection in any of these dimensions is not fully achievable, we can become more like Christ in all of them. This should be the goal and purpose for all Christians everywhere. It is my hope that this Faith Matrix blog will help move people along towards a deeper connection with God, and further perfection of us towards His image
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