This Is Not That: Formation

A Dangerous Myth

If you hang around church long enough, you’ll hear the same line from the late Dallas Willard: “Grace is opposed to earning, not effort.”

It sounds balanced, holy even—like wisdom for the modern soul. But it’s actually one of the most dangerous half-truths in the Christian world.

Because it presents the idea that salvation (life with God) and sanctification (growth in life) are two separate acts. The result? You start to think God began the story, but you’re the one finishing it.

The Apostle Paul couldn’t have disagreed more.

To a group who believed faith in Jesus is something we must validate with right behavior, Paul cuts to the chase: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6).

”Circumcission” here is about our religious effort. Which is why Paul, just two verses later, adds, “We eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness” (Gal. 5:5).

Wait? Not “work”? Not “make happen”?

The word there—apekdechometha—means to expectantly await something that’s already guaranteed. It’s not passive. It’s the kind of waiting that buzzes with anticipation—like the way my mom waited when my kid brother came home from Iraq.

I remember her pacing the floor, eyes darting to the clock—heart already out the door before he even walked off the bus. She wasn’t earning his return; she was responding to it. Every breath was charged with love, not labor.

That’s the kind of waiting Paul describes here. The posture of trust, not toil.
And it sits in the same paragraph where he warns that if we try to be right or enough by what we do—we’re the ones who have “fallen from grace.

So here’s the question that breaks the dam: What if spiritual formation isn’t something we achieve for Jesus, but something that unfolds in us as we trust who He already is for us?

The Myth of Earning

Modern Christianity has been catechized by the popular self-help platform, not Scripture. From the gym to the pulpit, everything screams, Be something more. Formalized churches just baptize the same message: Be the best version of yourself for God.

Underneath all the holy language lies the same transaction—if I do enough, God will be pleased and finally use me. We call it “discipleship,” but it smells a lot like performance management.

Paul saw this coming.

The Galatians were a group of everyday believers (like us) who started in the Spirit but were trying to finish in the flesh (Gal. 3:3). They believed Jesus got them in, but effort would validate their claim. And Paul doesn’t gently correct them—he explodes: “You fools! Who bewitched you?”

Because striving dressed up as spirituality isn’t innocent; it’s another form bondage—just with a halo.

The Freedom of “Work Out”

When Paul tells the Philippians to “work out your salvation”—the life you have in Jesus—“with fear and trembling,” he isn’t sneaking the old system back in through the side door. The Greek verb katergazesthe means to bring to full expression, not to manufacture.

In other words, Paul is saying, Let what’s already in you—Jesus’ righteousness—come to the surface in your everyday life (1 Cor. 1:30).

And in case we missed it, the very next line undercuts any thought that our effort was welcomed: “For it is God who works (energeō) in you both to will and to act according to His good pleasure” (Gal 2:13).

That’s the great reversal.

The life of faith isn’t you working for God’s glory; it’s God working in you for your joy. You’re not the engine, you’re the instrument.

Capon called it “the dance of faith”—the life that happens after the party’s already been thrown. You’re not building the feast; you’re learning to digest it.

The Awe That Trembles

The “fear and trembling” Paul mentioned isn’t panic in the face of divine threat; it’s the knees-buckling wonder that hits when grace finally lands. Because you realize the infinite, unstoppable love of God has moved into your skin—and you did nothing to make it happen.

It’s not Oh no, I might blow it.
It’s Oh wow, He really did it.

That’s the tremor of grace: the shock that holiness isn’t what we find when we overcome religion’s—or Plato’s—imagined separation between us and a hoy God; it’s about reveling in the union we already have with Him.

Because here’s the thing: if anyone ever had the chance to prove their faith, it was Abraham. And yet, the climax of his story isn’t the moment he raised the knife over his son Isaac—it’s the moment God stopped him from this madness.

Because the God Jesus reveals doesn’t demand sacrifice to be satisfied like the gods of Abraham’s day demanded. Instead, God uses this popular belief to set a stage that will set him, and us, free from this debilitating delusion.

You see, what is often lost in the conversation about Abraham’s faith is the fact that he had faith in God long before this act on Mount Moriah (Gen 15:6).

So the test on the mountain wasn’t about how Abraham proved his faithfulness, but how God exposed his false image Him.

God’s interruption—His “Stop!”—was the gospel in miniature: the end of every religion that tries to obtain or validate God’s favor with our doing.

The ram in the thicket wasn’t a backup plan. It was God’s planned revelation: grace hidden in plain sight. In short: the moment Abraham dropped the knife, his faith came alive.

That’s the kind of faith James celebrates when he says, “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:17).

He isn’t preaching moralism, undoing all that Jesus taught, with an idea that we need to show our difference from the world; he’s describing movement.

The Greek phrase—pistis chōris ergōn nekra estin—literally means “faith in who Jesus is without expression” is not evil. It’s just irrelevant to someone at your doorstep who has nothing to eat.

When trust awakens, it moves—it loves—it acts in God’s time. Paul calls it “faith working through love” (pistis di’ agapēs energoumenē, Gal 5:6).

That same root, energeō, ties it all together: the life of God is working in us—not us working up enough willpower to bring God glory, leads to life for all.

Formation by Trust

If the gospel I’ve been unpacking in this series is true, spiritual formation isn’t a ladder we climb to be something more than we are—it’s a life we learn to live because of the God who made His home in us.

And lives don’t climb; they grow.

Paul’s metaphor for growth is always agricultural, not architectural. Fruit, not factories. Waiting, not grinding. “The fruit of the Spirit,” he says—not the achievement of the saint.

And what’s the prerequisite for fruit?
Exactly what I unpacked in All A Lark: abiding.

Staying connected to the Source by trust in Jesus, not toil for Him. Or as Jesus puts it, “Apart from Me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

That’s not a threat, or a “use me to do more,” it’s an invitation: stop pretending the branch can outperform the vine, or is somehow in need of something the gardener (Father) isn’t aware of (John 15).

Spiritual formation, then, is simply what happens when a life of trusting Jesus replaces control over what we think is needed—when we stop clutching at outcomes and start believing the life of Jesus is already pulsing in ours.

One that comes to fruition in His time, not ours (Phil 1:6).

That’s the ultimate protest against the pursuit of self-importance anxious overachievers have peddled in the name of “salvation.”

It’s how faith breathes; how it shapes us. It’s the branch refusing to detach and build its own tree—as if that were ever an option.

To wait is to trust that formation is already happening—even when it doesn’t look like it. That the Spirit’s pace is slower, deeper, and truer than our programs.

Why Effort Still Matters—Just Differently

Trust doesn’t mean blissful laziness; it means participation. Paul calls it cooperation with God, not contribution for Him.

“By the grace of God I am what I am,” he says, “and His grace toward me was not in vain; I labored more abundantly than they all—yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Cor 15:10).

That’s the paradox of faith: grace works harder than effort ever could, precisely because it’s not trying to prove anything.

How could he say this?

Because when you know you’re already home in who Jesus is for you, you finally have energy to love your neighbors instead of impress your deity.

This shift toward trust changes everything:

Because actual spiritual formation isn’t lazy; it’s liberated. It doesn’t resist change—it just refuses coercion with the idea that faith is about :what we can see” verses trust in the One we can’ “see” (2 Cor. 4:18).

You start finding God in the ordinary again—in coffee with friends, in laughter after loss, in the long patience of love.

You stop trying to become Christlike and start realizing Christ is already your likeness despite what you struggle with at this time (2 Cor 3:18; Col 3:3).

The Gospel According to the Lark

At Lark, we call this “letting what’s free stay free.”

Because the life of faith isn’t about mastering spiritual techniques; it’s about rediscovering the joke that the cage was never locked.

You don’t work for salvation; you work it out.

You don’t strive to make fruit; you stay rooted and watch it grow.

You don’t fear you’ll fall short; you tremble at how much you’ve already been given in Jesus.

Faith isn’t the knife you raise to prove your loyalty for God; it’s the laughter that escapes when you finally drop it.

Formation isn’t you improving your résumé for heaven; it’s you learning to live as someone who already belongs.

And maybe that’s why Paul ends Galatians the way he does—not with a plan, but with peace: “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation” (6:15).

The new creation isn’t a goal. It’s a gift you have been given ((2 Cor. 5:17). You’re standing in it. And so, you breathe.

In Short

The whole story of Scripture points here:

Faith is trust in who Jesus already is for us.
Formation is the shape that trust takes over a lifetime.

Abraham was flawed, but believed.
Moses was anxious, yet waited.
David was foolish, but rested.
Paul was was weak, and so he stopped striving.
And Jesus—God in flesh—did the unthinkable: He trusted His Father all the way into the death our religion wanted more than Him, and came out the other side carrying us with Him.

That’s our formation: not moral polishing, but participation in that trust. As we learn to see Him, and trust Him, we become like Him—not by effort, but by exposure to His reckless grace (2 Cor 3:18).

So maybe the call today isn’t “Try harder.”
Maybe it’s “Trust deeper.”
Wait. Watch. Walk in what is true.

Because the fruit will come. It just always does when the roots know they’re loved despite their performance.

So relax. You’re not a degenerate on probation. You’re at the party Love has thrown. And the wine’s already been poured for you to enjoy.