Spiritual Formation: Becoming a Person Who Intentionally Loves
M. Robert Mulholland Jr., in his book Invitation to a Journey, describes spiritual formation as "a process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others."
It's a good definition. I like that he describes formation as a process, as something ongoing. He also makes an important distinction by emphasizing that we are being conformed to the image of Christ, not simply transformed into something else. However, I think the phrase "for the sake of others" is the weakest part of his definition. We mature and grow spiritually not only for the sake of others but also for our own sake.
In Mark 12:30–31, a scribe asks Jesus about the greatest commandment. Jesus answers by reminding him of the Jewish Shema and then adds a second commandment: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."
Clearly, love includes loving yourself.
I'd like to add to the definition: Spiritual formation is becoming a person who intentionally loves.
BECOMING
To become anything, we must start in the present moment. We often get distracted by the past or obsessed with the future. But growth and maturity require us to be present. The past has happened; the future does not yet exist. The present is where we live, make choices, and participate in what comes next.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus frames being present not as passive mindfulness but as active, relational trust in God. This trust frees us from anxiety and greed. Don't worry about tomorrow, he says. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Be present today. Be present now.
God is present with creation on a moment-by-moment basis. For us, becoming begins with being present. From that place, we can make choices, grow, and mature.
A PERSON
You are uniquely made in the image of God.
You possess a beautiful capacity to give and receive love. You have free agency, which means you can actually co-create the future alongside a relational God.
When I talk about love, the giving and receiving are both important. For love to flourish, it must be reciprocal. Healthy, loving relationships involve both giving and receiving. If I only took from my wife without ever giving, how long would our relationship remain healthy? Not long.
God's love for you is similar. Being in relationship with God is also reciprocal. It is a mutually affecting relationship. God influences me, and my free agency and choices affect God. In fact, they affect not only God but also other people and the wider creation.
This is good news. It means you matter. Your life matters, and your choices carry real weight.
Spiritual formation is becoming a person...
WHO INTENTIONALLY
This word intentional is key.
God influences us but does not force us to grow or make loving choices. Philosophers might say that God's love is persuasive rather than coercive. I agree. God does not override human freedom or micromanage our spiritual formation.
Spiritual formation happens as we intentionally practice love in the present moment.
Thomas Jay Oord defines love this way:
"To love is to act intentionally, in relational response to God and others, to promote overall well-being."
His emphasis on intention includes three aspects that I find particularly helpful: deliberation, motive, and freedom. You can explore these ideas more fully in his A Systematic Theology of Love.
DELIBERATENESS: Learning to Choose Love
Love involves purposeful action.
If you're anything like me, you take time to consider the decisions you make. Sometimes your responses are good—patient, loving, and generous. Other times, they're not so good—reactive, blaming, and unkind.
The truth is that many of our responses are spontaneous, shaped by habits and patterns we've developed over the years.
But we can learn to become more reflective and intentional in our choices. Spiritual formation involves recognizing these patterns and becoming more deliberate about choosing actions that promote overall well-being.
Consider Jesus' teaching about loving our enemies. Loving someone who has hurt us doesn't necessarily come naturally. It may require us to stop, reconsider our instincts, and deliberately choose a different response.
This does not mean ignoring injustice, tolerating abuse, or pretending harmful behavior doesn't matter. Love can establish boundaries, confront wrongdoing, and seek accountability.
But it does mean refusing to let our responses be determined entirely by the hurt we've experienced. We learn to choose love even when love isn't our first inclination.
MOTIVE: Becoming Someone Who Desires to Do Good
Let me tell you a story.
A man worked with a colleague at a prominent technology company in Silicon Valley. They had spent years working on a project, both hoping it would be a roaring success.
The two often went out with a group of friends to a local restaurant after work. As often happens, relationships developed, including romantic ones. On one particular evening, however, the man and his colleague found themselves interested in the same young woman. What began as friendly banter soon turned into hurt feelings.
The man decided to spread a false rumor about his colleague to ruin his reputation and, hopefully, win the woman's affection. He spread word around the office that his colleague was secretly developing his own technology outside the company.
Eventually, the rumor reached the boardroom. But the executives saw the man's alleged initiative as creative thinking and the kind of chutzpah they wanted in their senior management.
The man's attempt to sabotage his colleague ended up getting him promoted.
The man's motive matters. He wanted to discredit his colleague for selfish reasons. Even though the outcome benefited him, we should not call his actions loving. He intended to cause harm. His motive was wrong.
Dr. Oord says, "The motive aspect reminds us that an action's consequences don't determine whether it was done in love."
Our actions matter, and so do the motivations behind them. The goal of spiritual formation isn't simply to look good. It's to become more loving.
SELF-DETERMINATION: Becoming People Who Freely Choose Love
Love requires freedom. For love to be genuine, it cannot simply be imposed. We must have some capacity to determine how we respond to the people and circumstances around us.
We can be influenced, encouraged, challenged, and invited into love. But genuine love requires our participation.
This has significant implications for spiritual formation.
God doesn't simply override our personalities, choices, and desires to make us loving people. Instead, God continually invites, influences, empowers, and works with us toward greater love.
In this sense, we participate in our own formation. We can also resist it. Spiritual formation is not something that simply happens to us. It involves our ongoing, relational participation.
Spiritual formation is becoming a person who intentionally...
LOVES
Ah, the word love. It can mean so many things. I can love ice cream, candles, truth, my wife, books, hiking, or a shirt.
Oord's definition of love is the best I know: "To act intentionally, in relational response to God and others, to promote overall well-being."
I encourage you to read his book The Uncontrolling Love of God for a deeper exploration of this idea.
What I'd like to emphasize here is that spiritual formation happens in relationships.
This is an important distinction. The statement is neutral in itself: spiritual formation can be good or bad, depending on the relationships in which it takes place. We are all formed by something or someone. The question is: Who or what is forming us?
If we want to be formed into the image of Christ, then our relationship with a loving God matters.
Like Dr. Seuss, the "who" matters. If love is relational, then spiritual formation requires relationship with another. It cannot become merely an individual project. I'd argue that much of the contemporary American church treats it this way, but that's another story.
We learn patience by relating to people who challenge it. We learn forgiveness through the difficult work of navigating hurt and disappointment. We learn generosity when someone else's needs invite us beyond our own interests.
And we learn love through relationships in which love is practiced, received, extended, and sometimes painfully rediscovered.
Again, the "who" matters. Does the relationship create space for honesty, grace, reciprocity, freedom, and growth? Does it encourage our formation and seek our greatest well-being, or does it simply encourage us to become more religious?
We need spaces where people welcome questions, where failures aren't the end of the story, and where everyone is free to grow without pretending to have everything figured out.
Spiritual formation is becoming a person who intentionally loves.
Am I becoming more deliberate in my responses, more generous in my motives, and more willing to participate freely in the well-being of others?
Because ultimately, spiritual formation isn't about becoming a more impressive religious person. It's about becoming a more loving human being.
And that's a journey worth taking.
REFERENCES
M. Robert Mulholland Jr., Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation, rev. and exp. ed. (IVP Formatio, 2016).
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