“Dada, why do you use weights?” my daughter asked me one morning as I was working out in the garage. I paused for a moment and said, “this is going to sound weird, but in order to get stronger, you have to be willing to make yourself weaker.”
Her brow furrowed with that dada-are-you-kiddin’? look. “Seriously,” I said.
I explained to her how in order to make your muscles get stronger in the long term, you use the weights to make them weaker temporarily. In doing this, the muscle grows back stronger than it was before.
Strength comes from appropriate types and amounts of stress, along with nutrients for healing. A body that undergoes no stress and strain gets progressively weaker.
My aim in this post is to show that the same principle applies to the spiritual life.
Fasting as Spiritual Exercise
In his essay “On Liturgical Fasting” from The Liturgical Cosmos, David Fagerberg makes this observation about two ways in which fasting is able to strengthen our spiritual lives.
“But when Christ says, “man does not live by bread alone,” having never left the bosom of the father, he is articulating the true end for which man and woman were created. Remember that the church is both a hospital for sinners and a nursery for saints. The sinner must use fasting for mortification, but the saint in training finds that fasting’s true liturgical purpose is for deification. The repentant fast does battle with the passions, but only to enable the liturgical fast: we were not created for bread alone, but for fellowship with the Trinity.” (Emphasis mine)
Here Fagerberg is laying out a path of spiritual progression that begins with fasting for the purpose of mortification (or putting to death the sinful passions) and culminates in fasting for the purpose of deification (growth in godliness). These may be new concepts for some, so let’s unpack each of these ideas from Scripture.
Mortification
St. Paul discusses mortification in both his letter to the Romans and his first letter to the Corinthians. In Romans, he states that mortification (putting to death the deeds of the body) is a requirement for spiritual life.
“So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” (Romans 8:12-13)
Note at least three things about Paul’s statement on mortification:
- It must be done by the Spirit. This is not a work that natural man can perform on his own. It presupposes grace in the life of the believer.
- There is genuine activity and effort on the part of the believer. This is not a passive process. The believer must “put to death the deeds of the body”.
- Engaging this process results in life for the believer.
In his first letter to the Corinthians he describes it this way:
“Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.” (1 Corinthians 9:25-27)
Again we see the idea that growth in the spiritual life requires discipline in the body. Much in the way that bodily discipline creates freedom for the athlete to perform, so too does discipline create freedom for the believer to live in a way that does not render him disqualified. Note again that this is an active process.
While Paul does not directly mention fasting here, the Christian tradition has practiced fasting as a means of bringing the passions and appetites of the body under control while emphasizing our need for prayer and dependence upon Holy Spirit in that process. The season of Lent is a yearly invitation to revisit that process mortification.
Deification
Mortification, however, is not the end goal of the Christian life. The end goal is life in union with the Holy Trinity itself, such that we participate in the divine nature. St. Peter describes this in his second epistle:
“His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature.” (2 Peter 1:3-4)
The term used to describe this process is deification (or theosis in the eastern traditions). This is the process through which God transforms our nature to reflect His own as He pours His grace into our souls. This actively increases our righteousness or justification.
Note again that for both Paul and Peter, God’s grace is prerequisite and always leads in the process of spiritual growth. While man is certainly active in the process, he is active in a sense of cooperation, not initiation.
Conclusion
This, according to Fagerberg, is the true purpose of fasting in the Christian life. Our voluntary entering into weakness and discomfort brings about strength, growth, and godliness. It is a way of entering into the life that Christ lived, while simultaneously asking Him to live through us.
I pray that this Lenten season will be an opportunity for us all to put to death the deeds of the flesh and grow in the likeness of Christ.
