Following Jesus is often described in terms of what we should believe and how we should behave. We are encouraged to read Scripture, pray, attend church, and follow Jesus' teachings. These practices can be meaningful, but they raise a deeper question: How do people actually become more like Jesus? Is transformation primarily the result of acquiring knowledge and following instructions, or does it happen through the experiences, relationships, and challenges of everyday life?
The Gospels present discipleship as something much more involved than learning religious information. Jesus' disciples traveled together, shared meals, worked, disagreed, misunderstood one another, and encountered people whose lives challenged their assumptions. Their formation happened in the middle of life, not apart from it. Perhaps becoming more like Jesus today involves recognizing that the ordinary circumstances of our lives are also places where we are being shaped.
We Are Shaped Through Relationships and Community
When Jesus called his disciples, he did not invite them into an isolated program of personal improvement. He brought them into a community where they would learn to live alongside people with different backgrounds, personalities, expectations, and understandings of the world. A tax collector and a Zealot could find themselves among the same group of disciples. Their shared commitment to Jesus did not erase their differences, but it created opportunities to discover a different way of relating to one another.
The New Testament repeatedly describes Christian life through relationships: bearing one another's burdens, practicing hospitality, encouraging one another, and learning to love. These instructions assume that transformation happens through participation with others. Community exposes our impatience, selfishness, generosity, compassion, and capacity to forgive. It provides opportunities to practice what we might otherwise only discuss.
This connects to a question worth exploring elsewhere: Is the church a building or a community? If church is fundamentally about people learning to follow Jesus together, then belonging involves more than attending an event. It means becoming part of a shared life where people both contribute to and receive from one another.
We Are Shaped Through Conflict
Conflict is often treated as evidence that something has gone wrong in a Christian community. Yet disagreement is a recurring feature of the biblical story, including the relationships among Jesus' disciples and the earliest churches. The disciples argued about greatness, misunderstood Jesus' priorities, and struggled to accept perspectives that challenged their expectations. The early Christian communities also wrestled with cultural differences, religious practices, and questions of inclusion.
In Acts 15, the Jerusalem gathering addresses a serious disagreement about Gentile believers and the requirements being placed upon them. The discussion matters because the participants must confront inherited assumptions about belonging to God's people. Conflict becomes an occasion for discernment rather than merely a threat to institutional unity.
Not every conflict produces growth. Disagreement can also become destructive when people refuse to listen, use authority to silence others, or treat every challenge as disloyalty. But when approached with humility, conflict can expose assumptions we did not know we held. Following Jesus does not mean avoiding every disagreement. It means learning how to respond to disagreement without abandoning love, truthfulness, or respect for another person's dignity.
We Are Shaped Through Work, Worship, and Service which is Avodah
One of the most useful ideas for understanding formation comes from the Hebrew word avodah. Depending on its context, the word can refer to work, service, or worship. This does not mean every occurrence carries all three meanings simultaneously, but the range of meaning challenges the modern tendency to separate religious activity from the rest of life.
If work and service can be understood as meaningful expressions of devotion, then spiritual formation is not confined to church gatherings or private devotional practices. The way we perform our work, fulfill responsibilities, treat coworkers, serve our families, and contribute to our communities becomes part of the larger question of how we live before God.
This connects to the broader biblical relationship between hearing, serving, and responding. We might understand this through the movement Shema → Avodah → Obedience: attentive hearing, embodied service, and a life that responds to what has been understood. Rather than treating obedience as a checklist of religious requirements, this perspective invites us to consider how our entire lives are being shaped by what we hear and believe.
We Are Shaped by How We Treat Those on the Margins
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly encounters people who have been pushed to the edges of their communities. Some are marginalized because of illness, poverty, social status, religious reputation, or cultural identity. Jesus' responses often challenge the assumptions of those who consider themselves respectable, righteous, or entitled to determine who belongs.
In Luke 14:12–24, Jesus challenges conventional expectations about hospitality and social reciprocity. He speaks about inviting people who cannot repay the invitation and tells a parable in which those normally excluded from prestigious gatherings are welcomed to a banquet. In its context, the teaching confronts social status, honor, and the way people use relationships to reinforce their own position.
How we respond to marginalized people reveals something about the kind of people we are becoming. Do we extend dignity only to those who agree with us? Do we make room for people whose questions make us uncomfortable? Do we welcome those who have little social influence or institutional power? Following Jesus invites us to examine not merely whether we speak about love, but whether our communities make that love visible.
We Are Shaped Through Participation at the Table
Meals occupy a remarkable place in the Gospel narratives. Jesus eats with disciples, religious leaders, tax collectors, and people whose presence creates controversy. The table becomes a place of conversation, hospitality, confrontation, and belonging. Who receives an invitation, who is excluded, and who is considered worthy to participate often reveals the values of the surrounding community.
In Luke 5:27–32, Jesus shares a meal with Levi and others, prompting criticism from religious observers. His response challenges the assumption that association with certain people compromises religious faithfulness. The meal is not simply a social event; it becomes a visible expression of his mission.
For contemporary discipleship, the table offers an important image. Participation means more than allowing someone into a room. It involves giving people opportunities to contribute, ask questions, share experiences, and be heard. A community can claim that everyone belongs while structuring its life so that only a few voices matter. Jesus' example invites us to consider whether our tables genuinely make room for others.
We Are Shaped Through Belonging
Belonging and conformity are not the same thing. Conformity asks people to fit established expectations, sometimes at the expense of their questions, experiences, or conscience. Genuine belonging creates room for people to be known, valued, challenged, and encouraged as they grow.
Paul's image of the body in 1 Corinthians 12 is especially relevant. Addressing a community experiencing division and competition over spiritual gifts, Paul emphasizes the interdependence of its members. Those who appear weaker or less honored are not disposable. They are necessary to the life of the community.
This vision challenges communities that measure belonging primarily through agreement, attendance, or institutional loyalty. If every member has something meaningful to contribute, then participation cannot be reduced to watching a few people lead. Being shaped into the likeness of Jesus involves learning both to receive from others and to recognize the value of people whose contributions differ from our own.
We Are Shaped Through Questioning and Reconsideration
Transformation sometimes begins when something we have always believed no longer seems as straightforward as we once assumed. A familiar biblical passage takes on a different meaning when read in context. An encounter with someone outside our religious tradition challenges a long-held stereotype. A difficult experience causes us to reconsider what we have been taught about faith, authority, or community.
The account of the disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:13–35 offers a compelling picture. They are trying to make sense of events that have shattered their expectations. Jesus enters their conversation, listens to their understanding of what happened, and then helps them reconsider the Scriptures in light of the larger story. Their understanding changes through conversation, interpretation, and a shared meal.
Being shaped requires a willingness to learn. That does not mean every inherited belief is wrong or every new idea is correct. It means recognizing that growth often requires examining assumptions rather than defending them automatically. Questions can become part of faithful discipleship when they lead us toward greater understanding, humility, and love.
Transformation Is Not Something We Manufacture
All of these experiences raise an important question: Are we responsible for transforming ourselves?
In Philippians 2:12–13, Paul addresses a community of believers and encourages them to live out their salvation, while reminding them that God is at work among them, shaping both their willing and their acting. The passage holds together human participation and divine activity rather than presenting transformation as a project accomplished entirely through personal effort.
We can cultivate habits of attention, practice hospitality, engage in meaningful service, and become more receptive to correction. But transformation is not simply the predictable outcome of completing enough religious activities. Nor is it something leaders can manufacture through pressure, emotional experiences, or enforced conformity.
The invitation is to participate in a life in which our understanding, desires, relationships, and actions can be reshaped. Sometimes that happens through encouragement and beauty. Sometimes through conflict, failure, difficult questions, or encounters with people we might otherwise overlook.
Becoming More Like Jesus in Ordinary Life
Perhaps the most significant shift is recognizing that spiritual formation is not a separate activity added to an already busy life. It happens within the life we are living. The workplace, dinner table, neighborhood, family, and community become places where our character is revealed and where growth becomes possible.
We are shaped when we choose to listen rather than dominate a conversation, when we make room for someone who has been excluded, when we reconsider an assumption, or when we serve without expecting recognition. We are also shaped when we fail, acknowledge that failure, and become willing to change.
Following Jesus is not about achieving a flawless religious identity. It is about participating in an ongoing process of becoming more like the person we claim to follow.
The question is not merely what religious activities we perform, but what kind of people our everyday lives are shaping us to become.
Questions Worth Wrestling With
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What experiences and relationships have most influenced the person I am becoming?
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How do I respond when conflict challenges my assumptions or threatens my sense of certainty?
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Do I view my everyday work and responsibilities as separate from my spiritual life?
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Who is missing from the tables and communities in which I participate?
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Does my understanding of belonging allow room for disagreement and genuine contribution?
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Am I becoming more like Jesus, or simply more comfortable with the religious expectations of my community?