11
(6) While spiritual formation is concerned with the transformation of the
individual believer into Christlikeness, it is necessarily social and must be pursued in the context
of community. Willard says, "Spiritual formation . . . is always profoundly social. You cannot
keep it to yourself. Anyone who thinks of it as a merely private matter has misunderstood it.
Anyone who says, ,,Its just between me and God" . . . has misunderstood God as well as ,,me"
[DW, 182]. If apprentices of Jesus is to be fully transformed into his likeness, they will not only
love God with all their being, but they will also love their neighbor as themselves. This is in fact
a "sure mark of the outcome of spiritual formation" given by Christ himself, cf. John 13:35 [DW,
182-183]. To that end, we must identify the woundedness we have all experienced in our social
dimension identified by Willard as coming through assault and withdrawal. We must receive
healing from that woundedness through the love of God in Christ. And we must pass that
healing and that love on to others.
19
The freedom to do that comes from our willingness to trust
Gods goodness and loving care for us in all of life. Willard writes,
Spiritual formation in Christ obviously requires that we increasingly be happily
reconciled to living in and by the direct upholding hand of God. . . . From within that
outlook we can cease from assault and withdrawal and can extend ourselves in blessing to
all whose lives we touch [DW, 197].
19
Willard writes, "If spiritual formation in Christ is to succeed, the power of these two
forms of evil [i.e. assault and withdrawal] in our own life, within our self absolutely must be
broken. So far as it is possible, they must be eliminated as indwelling realities, as postures we
take toward others. They also must be successfully disarmed as they come toward us. And they
must be eliminated in our social environment especially in the fellowship of Christs
followers." [DW, 181.]