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WWJD: How Did Jesus Train?

In my previous article ("How Could Jesus Do Miracles?"), I pointed out that Jesus lived and acted as a human being filled with the Holy Spirit in dependence on His Father's leading. Throughout His incarnation, He voluntarily refrained from employing His divine nature (Philippians 2:5-11). He thereby becomes a real example for us to follow. Accordingly, Paul can say without blinking an eye, "Follow me as I follow Christ."

To be sure, Jesus did not have a sin nature like us nor did He ever sin (2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:22). But as a finite human being, He was subject to growth in various ways. Thus, perhaps the best summary of Jesus' journey toward adulthood says that "Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men" (Luke 2:52, NASB).

In point of fact, Christianity is in certain ways, an ascetic religion and Jesus engaged in the regular practice of spiritual exercises or disciplines. We should follow Him in this. And to encourage such imitation, I shall do two things: (1) explain what a spiritual discipline is and why it works and (2) discuss Jesus' relationship with spiritual disciplines.

1. What is a spiritual discipline and why does it work? A Christian spiritual discipline is a repeated practice, done over and over again, in dependence on the Holy Spirit and under the direction of Jesus, to enable one to get good at certain things in life that one cannot learn to do by direct effort.

As Paul says in Romans 12:1: I urge you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your rational service of worship.

This verse is unpacked earlier in Paul's letter:

Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God … I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. (Romans 6:12-13, 19, italics added)

I wrote about the topic of spiritual discplines last year, but I believe it is important enough to repeat. To see the importance of these passages, let's set aside spiritual disciplines for a moment and bring up a fairly trying topic for many: learning to play a sport, for example, tennis!

In a very literal sense, the beginner brings to the game a specific tennis-character, consisting in the sum total of good and bad habits relevant for serving, using your backhand, and playing tennis in general. One's tennis-flesh is the sum of one's bad tennis habits — tendencies to hit the ball into the net or to serve outside the appropriate lines. Clearly, the goal of the novice is to improve his tennis-character. And this will require him to get rid of his tennis-flesh.

Now, exactly how does one do this? As a first step in answering this question, one must answer another question: Where do these bad habits reside? Answer: They reside in specific body parts ('members') as ingrained tendencies. One may have good habits in one's wrists but bad habits, tennis-flesh, residing in one's shoulders or ankles. Tennis-flesh resides in the specific members of one's body.

We are now in a position to vouchsafe a crucial insight: How does one develop a good tennis-character, that is, how does one become good at tennis? Clearly it is not enough to engage in daily tennis readings, watching Wimbledon each year, and seeking constant exposure to motivational tennis music (whether it be traditional tennis hymns or contemporary tennis praise music)!

No, one must present one's members to a tennis instructor at a tennis court as instruments of tennis "righteousness" instead of following one's tennis-flesh as an instrument of tennis "unrighteousness." By so presenting one's members, one gradually gets rid of bad tennis habits and replaces them with good ones. If this is done repeatedly, tennis transformation develops.

Now, exactly how does one present one's members to a tennis instructor? The answer consists in two crucial factors. First, a person must be committed to the pursuit of tennis righteousness (to getting good at tennis), and choose to submit as an apprentice to a master tennis instructor.

Second, one must "present one's body" to a tennis instructor repeatedly by engaging specific body parts in regular activities done over and over again through repeated practice and body movement, under the watchful eye of the teacher.

For example, one may present a particular body part, say the wrists, to the tennis instructor by practicing over and over again a specific wrist movement with racket in hand. In general, a sport's discipline is a repeated exercise relevant to that sport, a bodily movement involving specific body parts, repeated over and over again, that is done for the purpose of getting rid of the specific sport's flesh and replacing it with new habits that sport's righteousness that resides in specific body parts. A tennis discipline is done repeatedly not to get good at the discipline, but to get good at the game of tennis.

It should now be clear as to how insightful the passages under consideration really are for getting good at life. When one presents one's body to God as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1), it involves not only a one-time act of dedication, but a habitual, repeated bodily exercise (1 Timothy 4:7-8; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27) involving specific body parts (Romans 6:12-13, 19). This results in putting to death one's bad habits (Colossians 3:5), i.e., removing the flesh that resides in those body parts, and replacing it with righteousness that comes to reside in the members of one's body.

2. Jesus and Spiritual Disciplines. In Jesus' case, He did not practice spiritual disciplines to rid Himself of sinful habits residing in His flesh — something He did not have. But He did practice them to develop and sustain His human character and to draw strength from spiritual practices.

Remember: Historical narrative in the Ancient Near East was written not only to present historical facts, but to teach ethical and spiritual lessons through selecting certain events to report. Though it mentions them briefly, the Gospels indicate that Jesus engaged in certain disciplines, and we disciples ought to follow Jesus by applying His teachings and engaging in His behaviors and practices.

Some people react to the practice of spiritual disciplines on two closely related grounds. First, they suspect that such a practice expresses the attitude that one can grow spiritually on one's own, sort of like pulling oneself up by one's spiritual bootstraps, without dependence on God.

Second, some fear that such a practice is a form of works righteousness that expresses a legalistic approach to the Christian life. While some people may, in fact, approach the practice of spiritual disciplines so as to be guilty of these criticisms, the proper use of spiritual disciplines avoids these criticisms.

Spiritual disciplines should always be done in dependence on God's Holy Spirit in two ways: (1) One should seek the Spirit's guidance as to what discipline or disciplines one should practice at a particular stage of one's journey; (2) when engaging in a spiritual discipline, one should repeatedly place oneself in God's hands and express an openness to and dependency upon the Spirit's transforming power. In this way, a discipline is used as an occasion for the Spirit to change us and not as a form of Christian boot-strapping.

Further, the Christian life is opposed to earning but not to effort. We do not earn God's favor or the right to be respected by other Christians by how many disciplines we practice. But we do need to give our very best efforts to God as we seek to serve and grow in Him. So effort is in but earning is out!

But what spiritual disciplines do the Gospels report that Jesus practiced? Four seem central to His life: solitude, fasting, prayer, and service. He regularly slipped away to be in solitude and silence (Mark 1:35, 6:31, 46). He began His public ministry by strengthening Himself through a 40 day fast (Matthew 4:4) and, no doubt, He followed His culture's regular engagement in fasting. He combined the discipline of prayer with solitude (Mark 1:35), and He also combined prayer with the practice of "watchings" (see Luke 6:12) — the activity of spending an entire night in prayer, seeking God's face and His guidance. Finally, Jesus regularly practiced the spiritual discipline of service (see Matthew 20:26-27, John 13:3-9; cf. Philippians 2:5-11).

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Which spiritual disciplines would you like to work on in your life?

Join the discussion!

Then Much more could be said about spiritual disciplines in general and Jesus' use of them in particular.¹But for my purposes, the central point is this: Jesus practiced spiritual disciplines, we are to follow Him in this, and solitude, fasting, prayer and service are central among those disciplines.