FORMATION

Formation is often misunderstood precisely because it is rarely taught or practiced. Believers who have accepted Christ as Savior are assured they are forgiven, justified, accepted, and secure.

However, without formation questions begin to surface.

Why does obedience feel so exhausting?
Why do I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels?
If I am born again, why can’t I control myself?

For some, this confusion produces striving. For others, discouragement. For many, it produces a polished form of Christianity—busy, sincere, well-spoken, but inwardly stalled. The language of grace is fluent, yet the life remains largely unchanged.

This confusion is not a sign of rebellion. It is usually a sign that something essential was never explained.

Forgiven, But Still Striving

Scripture never presents forgiveness as God’s final aim. Forgiveness removes guilt—but it does not remove the offender. A person can be fully forgiven and still ruled by the old man who must die.

We are taught to believe in Christ, to trust His finished work, to rest in grace. But we are rarely shown how the old man is actually put to death. We are told that confessing faith in Christ makes us new before we have surrendered the old.

So we double down. We strive to resist our urges, behave our way into change, and discipline our way into holiness. And when nothing works—or only works for a season—we assume the failure is ours: a lack of discipline, a lack of self-control, a lack of sustained effort.

“I Am Crucified With Christ”

Paul’s declaration—“I am crucified with Christ”—is often quoted as a spiritual status, as though crucifixion were a poetic way of saying “I’m a Christian now.”

Paul meant something far more severe.

Crucifixion is not a metaphor for sincerity. It is the end of the old man's rule.

When Paul says, “I no longer live,” he is not describing spiritual maturity—he is describing execution. The old man who once governed his desires, reactions, ambitions, and defenses was put to death. Only then did the Spirit raise a cruciform man, able to say, “yet not I, but Christ lives in me.”

The early Church understood what the modern Church has largely forgotten: resurrection life is never received apart from death. Formation does not invent this truth—it names the state, power, and authority in which the apostles walked.

What Formation Actually Is

Formation begins when you stop negotiating and start yielding. Formation is not intensified effort, but surrendered authority—it begins when the old man is no longer allowed to set the terms.

Formation cannot take place until the old man has been yielded, confessed, surrendered, and offered up to be stripped for resurrection. It does not begin with effort, insight, or discipline—it begins with death. Until the old man is crucified, the new cannot be raised.

Scripture consistently presents new life as inseparable from death to the old (Romans 6:3–7).

This is why forgiveness alone does not change us. This is why knowledge alone does not free us. This is why discipline alone produces striving instead of life.

Grace forgives instantly. Formation crucifies slowly.

How Did We Lose This?

The early Church did not abandon formation because it ceased to believe the gospel. It surrendered it when it ceased to live as a crucified people. When believers were hunted, despised, and martyred, death to self was not theoretical—and neither was its cost.

But faith shaped by surrender became difficult to sustain once Rome no longer sought to eradicate Christianity, but to absorb it.

What had once formed a yielded people through weakness and humility stood at odds with an ethos centered on strength and honor.

Consequently, the Gospel was not denied, but re-framed. Christ’s substitutionary death was increasingly emphasized as the grounds for justification, while identification with His suffering, death and resurrection receded as a lived pattern of formation due to the closeting of confession.

The Price of Concession

Once state-sanctioned outlaw status was lifted, public confession was relegated to a more socially acceptable and manageable space—the private confessional. Formation, which requires exposure, was thereby converted into a more respectable and dignified religious sacrament.

In that exchange, the Church did not lose its confession—but it lost its cross. The public death of the self was no longer required, and formation was reduced to something survivable rather than transformative. The internal toll of that trade—and the path to reclaiming a crucified identity—is the focus of Step Into the Light and Live. This is not a study of formation; it is an entry into it through the restoration of apostolic confession.

When new life is proclaimed without crucifixion, believers are left to manage what was never put to death. Conviction loses its authority. Exposure is avoided at all costs. What should wound the soul is softened, minimized, and finally justified.

The danger is not weakness alone — it is self-deception.

Grace is treated not as the power that ends the old self, but as provision for its survival. The Cross is used to shield reputation while the self refuses to let it claim identity. The freedom salvation promises remains distant and unreal, because the mercy of God is being used to sustain the very self that is destroying the soul.

Scripture leaves no room for borrowed assurance, calling each believer to sober self-examination rather than self-confidence (2 Corinthians 13:5).

The Folly of Remaining Uncrucified

This is how an uncrucified faith survives — not through open rebellion, but through careful preservation of the self. Life becomes curated. Speech grows guarded. Obedience turns selective. Christianity becomes performative — not because believers are insincere, but because a self that still rules cannot live honestly in the light.

No one “drifts” into resurrection life. The cross is the only doorway.

Nothing here feels openly hostile to God, which is why it can last for years. Yet the inward throne is never surrendered. The old ruler is protected, negotiated with, excused, and preserved — and where the old ruler is not deposed, the new cannot reign.

The Fallout

The fallout of remaining uncrucified is rarely sudden. It is gradual — almost imperceptible — and it often looks spiritual on the outside while staying self-ruled within.

wanting holiness while defending sin,
craving purity while clinging to secrecy,
loving light while quietly negotiating with darkness.

Sensitivity dulls. Desire shifts. What was once urgent becomes optional. The will, trained to manage conviction, slowly loses its responsiveness to the Spirit’s voice. What once produced grief begins to produce explanation. What was confessed becomes tolerated. What was resisted becomes familiar.

Jesus places fruit at the center of sober discernment — not as a merit badge, but as evidence of what is ruling the life (Matthew 7:16–23).

Warnings That Are Mercy

Scripture’s warnings about self-deception are not written to terrify the weak, but to awaken the sincere. A life predominantly ruled by the old man calls assurance into serious question and demands honest repentance and surrender — yet it does not authorize us to declare with certainty when regeneration did or did not occur. The mirror is given for examination, not accusation.

There is no innocent flirtation with darkness. What is defended eventually rules.

Scripture describes this hardening as progressive — a condition learned over time, not imposed in a moment. What is repeatedly resisted grows unfamiliar. What is continually concealed becomes easier to defend. Concealment ceases to be a tactic and becomes a teacher, shaping a life that can appear near to God while quietly remaining under the rule of self.

Hardening is described as progressive and urgent — “Today, if you will hear His voice…” (Hebrews 3:12–15). Scripture also warns against grieving or quenching the Spirit (Ephesians 4:30; 1 Thessalonians 5:19).

Formation Interrupts the Trajectory

The purpose of this warning is not despair but interruption. Formation exists because this trajectory can be broken. Where the self is finally yielded, the Spirit is no longer managed — He rules. And where He rules, repentance remains alive, sensitivity is restored, and obedience begins to grow from the inside out rather than being forced from the outside in.

This is the difference between striving to appear changed and being remade.

Formation names the condition. What follows is the surrender that makes new life possible — the return of honest, apostolic confession that ends negotiation and brings the self into the light.
Step Into the Light and Live