A three-dimensional spirituality: believe, love, act

Mario Bravo-Lamas, April 20, 2025

“It’s about following and imitating Jesus and helping others follow and imitate Him. It’s for everyone, not just some.” — Eun Strawser in Centering Discipleship

At Cristoforma, we understand Christian spirituality as an integrated path of transformation in three interwoven dimensions: believing, loving, and acting. It is a process in which God’s truth shapes our minds, Christ’s love transforms our hearts, and the Spirit’s presence guides our actions. It is not a closed system or a technique, but a life lived in communion with the Triune God.

This is not a fragmented or functional spirituality, but a life unified by the love of the Triune God, shaped by grace, and oriented toward participation in God’s redemptive story. In other words, it’s not just about what we believe (orthodoxy), love (orthopathy), or do (orthopraxy), but about who we are in Christ and how that identity transforms everything.

One of the great challenges of Christian spirituality today is avoiding fragmentation. Many emphasize doctrine (believing), others experience (loving), and others action (doing), as if they were separate or even competing compartments. However, healthy spiritual life is holistic: mind, heart, and body formed by and for God. This vision finds its center in the person of Christ and unfolds as a process of transformation into His image in all dimensions of life.

Christiform spirituality is interrelational and integrated. It unfolds in three dimensions — believing, loving, and acting — each shaped by three elements, and is embodied in the life of the disciple. This structure is not a rigid scheme, nor a technique or program, but a way to contemplate how Christ is formed in us in every area of life, through the Spirit and for the glory of the Father.

A Three-Dimensional Spirituality: Believing, Loving, Acting

Believing well (orthodoxy) is more than having correct doctrines: it’s inhabiting God’s story as our story. It is knowing the Triune God who loved us, redeemed us, and dwells in us by His Spirit. Truth is not an idea, but a Person: Jesus Christ.

Loving well (orthopathy) means letting our affections be shaped by God’s love. It involves a transformation of the heart, a reordering of desires, a renewed sensitivity.

Acting well (orthopraxy) is the natural fruit of a life rooted in God; it is embodying that truth and love in daily life. It is not activism, but obedient participation in the life of Christ.

1. Believing: A Spirituality Anchored in God and His Story

Orthodoxy is not just about having correct doctrines, but about living rooted in the reality of who God is and how He acts in history, inhabiting God’s story as our own. This dimension stands on three pillars:

Christian spirituality begins with the Triune God, eternal communion of love. The Father creates, the Son incarnates, and the Spirit indwells—all in love. This communion is the origin and destiny of all spiritual life. We were created and redeemed to participate in that love. We do not initiate this relationship: God seeks us, reveals Himself, and invites us to share in His life.

At the center of this story is Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son. In Him we see the Father, receive forgiveness, and discover what it means to be truly human. Jesus is not only our Savior, but also our model, guide, and destiny. In Him we come to know the Father and find our true identity. His life, death, and resurrection are the climax of the redemptive story, and His Spirit guides us to live that story from within.

This story is handed down to us in the Scriptures, not as just another book or manual, but as God’s living narrative. Reading the Bible is entering into the great story of salvation and allowing the Spirit to shape us through participation in it. As Vanhoozer says, “We don’t read to know, but to participate.” We hear God’s voice in His Word to discover who He is, who we are, and what it means to live in communion with Him.

The three elements of believing:

The Triune God: eternal love that creates, redeems, and dwells in us.
Jesus as center: revelation of God and model of new humanity.
The story of salvation: a living narrative we inhabit and that transforms us.

2. Loving: The Relational Center of the Christiform Heart

Orthopathy is loving well: allowing our affections to be shaped by God’s love. Spiritual life begins with having been loved first. As 1 John 4:10 states, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” It’s not just about feeling love, but living in response to the love of God who calls us beloved sons and daughters. Our spirituality is not born out of duty, but in response to God’s first love.

This love gives us a new identity: we are beloved sons and daughters, reconciled and embraced by grace. Our identity is not an achievement, but a gift. We don’t live to earn value but from the approval we have already received in Christ. From this identity, our union with Christ flourishes, which not only guides our decisions but transforms our hearts.

“I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20) is not just a metaphor. This union transforms our desires, emotions, and priorities from within. It is an affective formation that produces a Christiform heart, where our affections reflect those of Christ.

From that union springs the imitation of Christ—not as external copying, but as affective participation. To love, forgive, and serve like Him. It is an embodied spirituality that forms a heart like His: sensitive, just, merciful, free. We do not imitate external gestures, but are transformed from within, to live in loving communion with God and others, to love as He loved and live as He lived. Not out of obligation, but because His love has been poured into our hearts.

The three elements of loving:

Identity in Christ: we are beloved children by grace.
Union with Christ: Christ lives in us and transforms our hearts.
Imitating Christ: living as He lived, from the heart.

3. Acting: An Embodied and Sent Spirituality

Faith is expressed in concrete actions. A spirituality without action is sterile, but action without communion with God is empty activism. Orthopraxy is the fruit of a life rooted in God. It is not activism, but obedient participation in the life of Christ. It is the concrete embodiment of believing and loving. Acting well means living the life of Christ in all areas of existence.

It begins in the person, where the Spirit forms Christ’s character in everyday life. Spiritual disciplines—like prayer, Scripture meditation, silence, or worship—are not isolated duties, but means by which the Spirit shapes Christ’s character in us across every area of life.

Spirituality is not formed in isolation. It continues in the church, a community of shared transformation. There we practice the gospel: forgiveness, fellowship, service, worship. We don’t attend church—we are the church: the living body of Christ.

And it projects into God’s mission. Spirituality sends us into the world—not to impose, but to serve, bear witness, restore. Our vocation, relationships, and professions become places where the gospel is embodied in our words and actions.

The three elements of acting:

The person: holistic inner formation and Christlike character.
The church: a community where the gospel is lived and learned.
God’s mission: active participation in His work in the world.

These three dimensions do not follow a sequence but are interwoven. The person forms the community, the community sustains the mission, and the mission reveals the person in formation. Everything is connected; everything converges in Christ.

Toward a Christiform Life

A Christiform spirituality is a whole life unified by the love of the Triune God. Not perfect, but fully oriented toward God. Not a technique or a series of isolated habits, but an integrated process that forms a new person in Christ. It is a spirituality that unites mind, heart, and body; a life that believes deeply, loves sincerely, and acts faithfully, because it has been transformed by grace.

In a fragmented and self-centered world, this spirituality offers an alternative: trinitarian, incarnational, communal, and missional. It does not seek to do more or feel more, but to be transformed in Christ, by Christ, and for Christ.

Believing (Trinity, Christ, Story) is the theological and narrative foundation. What we believe provides the framework that defines who we are and how we live.

Element	Content	Relationship with “Loving” and “Acting”
The Trinity	God is eternal love in communion. The source of our identity.	This Trinitarian love is the model and source of Christian communion and mission. Our identity is relational.
Jesus as Center	In Him we see who God is and who we are called to be.	Union and imitation: we are transformed into His image to live as He did. Jesus reveals and models God’s love.
Salvation History	We locate ourselves within God’s redemptive story.	This story shapes our identity, direction, and action. It invites us to participate in the mission of reconciliation.

Loving (Identity, Union, Imitation) is living from what we believe, so that Christ may be formed in us, to love as He loved. This love naturally sends us into action.

Element	Content	Relationship with “Believing” and “Acting”
Identity in Christ	Sons and daughters loved by grace. We don’t act to become, we act because we already are.	Our identity is founded in Trinitarian love (believing) and expressed in just and compassionate relationships (acting).
Union with Christ	We live in Him. We participate in His life, death, and resurrection.	Our faith is incarnational: Christ lives in us. His life shapes our decisions, desires, and mission.
Imitation of Christ	Imitating His compassion, humility, obedience, and surrender.	One cannot act like Christ without knowing Him (believing) or without loving Him (loving). Orthopraxy flows from this inner formation.

Act (Person, Church, Mission) provides the concrete and practical context. It is the embodied expression of faith in daily life. Christian action is nothing less than believing and loving set in motion: inward (personal formation), sideways (community), and outward (mission).

Sphere	Content	Relationship to “believing” and “loving”
Person (holistic)	Christlike character formation through disciplines, habits, and daily obedience.	Personal identity is cultivated, faith is deepened, and obedience is practiced. It is where belief and love are internalized.
Church (community)	The space where we grow, learn to love, and serve with others.	The church is where we live out Trinitarian communion, learn to imitate Christ in community, and are equipped for mission.
Mission (society)	Active participation in the world through justice, compassion, and witness.	Trinitarian love and union with Christ are made visible in our public actions. The story of salvation continues through us.

It is not merely about knowing Christ, but living in Him, becoming like Him, and carrying His presence into the world. That is the heart of discipleship.

As the apostle Paul wrote:

“My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you…” (Galatians 4:19)

That is our longing.

That is our path.

This is Cristoforma.

Postscript: How did we arrive at this?

It has been a process of several years, beginning with a search to define which elements can be considered essential within evangelical Christian doctrine. We took as a reference the well-known phrase often attributed to Augustine—though more likely spoken by Rupertus Meldenius: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” Based on this principle, we conducted a categorization and comparison of various doctrinal sources: the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the five solas of the Reformation, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, the Bebbington Quadrilateral (including critiques and revisions such as this article, and the work of Michael Bird, Daniel Treier, Roger Olson, Nancey Murphy, and the book The Spectrum of Evangelicalism), the “Fourfold Gospel” (in both its Alliance and Pentecostal expressions; for the Alliance version we reviewed chapters of Advancing the Vision edited by Van de Walle), and integral mission as defined in the Lausanne Covenant and its four main documents (Lausanne, Manila, Cape Town, and Seoul).

We then conducted a deep review of the doctrine of salvation across various thinkers and traditions: Irenaeus, Luther, Calvin, John Wesley, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, N. T. Wright, the Lausanne Movement, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, Todd Billings, Rankin Wilbourne, Matthew Bates, Joel Green, John Barclay, Stephen Chester, Will Willimon, Diane Leclerc, Jacob Lett, Mark Maddix, Ben C. Blackwell, R. L. Hatchett, Michael Gorman, the “triple way” of Pseudo-Dionysius and Teresa of Ávila. We also included insights from conversations and workshops with leaders, youth, and teens from Iglesia Dinamarca in Temuco, as well as courses taught at the Seminario Alianza and Iglesia Mi Refugio in Padre Las Casas, among other training contexts.

In a later phase, we categorized and compared diverse proposals on spiritual formation, including approaches from Catherine Barsotti, Fuller Seminary’s Spiritual and Vocational Formation Groups, Kenneth Boa, Rick Warren, Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Peter Scazzero, SoulLeader.org, Adele Ahlberg Calhoun, Ruth Haley Barton, James Bryan Smith, Roberto Ampuero Rivera, Diane Leclerc, Mark Maddix, Giacomo Cassese, Marlena Graves, Derek Vreeland, Bill Hull, Luke Timothy Johnson, John Mark Comer, John W. Stewart, Mike Yaconelli, the Ancient Practices book series, James K. A. Smith, the Ten Vineyard DNA Values (both in John Wimber’s and Alexander Venter’s versions), Mark Labberton, Andrew Root, Gary Millar, Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, Todd W. Hall, E. K. Strawser, J. R. Woodward, M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall, Sam Allberry, the Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, among others.

As a general theological framework, we have relied on the work of Kevin Vanhoozer, especially Hearers and Doers and The Drama of Doctrine (see this article), as well as the practical application of these ideas in Family Discipleship that Works by Brian Dembowczyk, among others.

Finally, we have refined our proposal in dialogue with key documents such as those of the Lausanne Movement (lausanne.org), the Reforming Catholic Confession (reformingcatholicconfession.com), the 2019 Joint Declaration on Justification (anglicancommunion.org), the doctrinal and scriptural statements of Fuller Theological Seminary, and the 2023 Book of Discipline of the Free Methodist Church.