An important rule of thumb for me in determining when to write something of a more critical nature—which is not something I enjoy doing—is whether or not the people around me, and especially the people in my church, might need clarity on a particular issue, author, or book. The existence of this review (not to mention its length) is a testament to how many people—from a variety of theological backgrounds—are captivated by what John Mark Comer has to offer.
I read Practicing the Way as soon as it came out (January 2024) and slowly re-read the book for this review. Since the book’s release, I’ve seen Comer pop up everywhere. Christianity Today published an excerpt from the book, and then a laudatory article about why everyone is reading John Mark Comer, and then a friendly interview with Comer. I’ve talked to PCA pastors reading (and appreciating) Comer’s emphasis on spiritual formation. I know church members and seminary students who are reading Comer. The book is a New York Times bestseller and was recently named the ECPA 2025 Christian Book of the Year. Although he is not without some thoughtful critics, it is obvious that many people are reading John Mark Comer and resonating with his message. As popular author and ministry leader Jennie Allen gushes in her blurb: “[This is] one of the most important books I have read in a decade. If we would all follow in this Way, our lives would change and the world would change.”
In A Nutshell
The message of Practicing the Way is outlined in the book’s subtitle: “Be with Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did.” Comer laments that in the West, we have a culture where you can be a Christian without being an apprentice of Jesus (16). Too many people are stuck in the same routine of going to church, studying their Bibles, and listening to sermons. These are essential practices, but largely ineffective for most people. What is missing is “practicing the Way,” which means being formed into people of love in Christ (73).
Central to Comer’s prescription for this process of spiritual formation is the adoption of “a Rule of Life”—a set of rhythms, relationships, and commitments. Comer’s “Rule” includes nine elements: Sabbath, solitude, prayer, community, Scripture, fasting, generosity, service, and witness. These nine practices are just one way of living in the Way of Jesus. Your personal “Rule” might look different. The important part in developing a rule is to find out what pathways work for you. Wherever you are in your spiritual journey, Comer encourages you to slow down, fix your eyes on Jesus, take one step forward, and if you fall, get back up again and keep going.
For almost twenty years Comer (b. 1980) was the pastor at Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon, a role he stepped away from in 2021 in order “to create simple, beautiful formation resources for church communities around the world.” You can see his heart for this kind of ministry throughout the book. Comer speaks directly to the person who feels stuck, the person who has reached a plateau, the person who keeps doing the same Christian things year after year but instead of growing spiritually just keeps growing older. Comer wants to see us “grow and mature into the kind of person who can say and do all the things Jesus said and did” (122).
Strengths
Practicing the Way is first and foremost about spiritual transformation. Comer is to be commended for unequivocally calling people to change. This is not an “I’m okay, you’re okay” kind of book. Just the opposite. Comer admits that he often fails as a follower of Jesus. He talks about sin and the need for grace. He frequently warns the reader not to be conformed to the world. Comer reminds us that we are all apprentices to someone or something, we all follow some kind of rule, we all practice some kind of Way. Comer wants us to find the best way to live—the way of love, the way of the kingdom, and the way of abundant life in Jesus.
The book is relentlessly focused on spending time with Jesus and living like Jesus. These are laudable goals. Comer draws people to a picture of Jesus that has “deep inner resonance” and is marked by “staggering beauty” (xiv). One can sense throughout the book, and especially at the end, that Comer has a heart to introduce people to Jesus and a burden for everyone to experience the freedom of the life that Jesus has to offer.
Most helpful for me was Comer’s insistence that spiritual formation requires intentionality. I can see enthusiastic readers adopting Comer’s nine practices, joining a group of friends to practice the Rule together, and being healthier and happier as a result. Comer is particularly good when he exposes the ways that digital technology has formed us, leading us to expect a life that is easy, fast, and controllable (115). Many people who think they are free, Comer argues, are actually controlled by their phones, by their appetites, and by the algorithms of Silicon Valley (167). With these dangers all around us, Comer’s gospel of slowness, subtraction, and Sabbath is a message many of us need to hear.
It’s not hard to see why this book resonates with many Christians. The writing is simple and conversational, with a clear outline and many short (often one-sentence) paragraphs. Comer meets people where they are and speaks to people in a way they can understand. Because the book has few theological edges (more on that later), almost any Christian (or non-Christian) can read the book and find something useful. For many people the takeaway may be as simple as: “I need to be more intentional about following Jesus. I’m going to put together a Rule for my life and see if my friends will do it with me.” If you come to the book with a solid theological framework, Practicing the Way can be an instrument for good in people’s lives.
Everyone Has a Tradition
Before I get to my concerns, it is important to understand from the outset that Comer inhabits a specific theological tradition. This might not be obvious, because he doesn’t fly any denominational flag or plant himself in a historic church tradition (e.g., Lutheran or Reformed or Roman Catholic). Nevertheless, Comer’s instincts, assumptions, and prescriptions are rooted in a familiar constellation of authors and sources.
If I had to describe Comer’s theological tribe in a sentence I’d say that he is deeply indebted to the Renovaré tradition of spiritual formation. Founded in 1988 by Richard Foster (b. 1942), Renovaré’s mission is to “imagine a world in which people’s lives flourish as they increasingly become like Jesus.” Foster may not be Comer’s main influence, but if you look at the terms and aims and people involved in Renovaré, you will get a pretty good idea of what Comer’s project is about. Practicing the Way is about finding your spiritual pathway. It’s about adopting spiritual practices. It’s about living the kingdom life in Jesus now and growing into the people we were meant to be. It’s about looking into the face of Christ and having him look back at you in love.
As one might expect from the Renovaré tradition, Comer’s conversation partners are not theologians, pastors, or exegetes, but spiritual directors, retreat leaders, therapists, and contemporary mystics. By my count, the two people cited most are Dallas Willard (1935–2013) and Henri Nouwen (1932–1996). Other authors frequently mentioned include: Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg, Marjorie Thompson, John Ortberg, Eugene Peterson, A.W. Tozer, Brother Lawrence, Frank Laubach, Rich Villodas, Dan Allender, Pete Scazzero, Thomas Kelly, Francis Spufford, Thomas Keating, Mother Teresa, and Kallistos Ware. Comer draws deeply from Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox authors, all of whom are familiar names in the spiritual formation tradition of the past 40 or 50 years.
In addition to the Renovaré label (and to be fair, Comer doesn’t use the label), two other terms help explain where Comer’s ideas come from.
Comer’s project is self-consciously a part of the mystical tradition. At one point, Comer lays all his “cards on the table” and agrees with Catholic theologian Karl Rahner that “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all” (51). For Comer, this means that he begins his days sitting cross-legged on the floor, praying the Psalms and meditating on a passage of Scripture. Comer says, I “talk to God about my life, listen for his voice, and attempt to just let go. But most of the time, I just sit there. I breathe. And I look at what my eyes can’t see” (53).
Comer’s project is also self-consciously a part of the charismatic tradition. He teaches a version of Spirit Christology whereby Jesus performed his miracles, not by “flexing” his God muscles, but solely by the power of the Holy Spirit. We, then, can do what Jesus did by the same Spirit (124–27). Comer suggests that preaching the gospel may mean “gently offering a prophetic word to a friend” (137) and demonstrating the gospel looks like healing, deliverance, prophecy, and justice (145–50). He highly recommends the books on healing by Francis MacNutt and John Wimber (248). Comer encourages churches to “do the stuff,” which he explains is a charismatic euphemism from Wimber for “prophecy, words of wisdom and knowledge, healings, miracles, and more” (140).
Of course, noting Comer’s sources and situating his theological instincts do not make those sources or instincts wrong, but it should give pause to readers from different traditions who might assume that Comer’s assumptions and prescriptions are simply biblical truths and ancient wisdom that we’ve forgotten. To the contrary, the central problem with Practicing the Way is that almost every significant part of the project depends on poorly interpreted biblical texts and superficial connections with (supposed) ancient precedents.
Let me mention four significant problems along these lines.
Which Way?
The first problem is Comer’s use of “the Way” as the organizing principle for spiritual formation. Citing Acts 9:2, 19:23, and 24:14, Comer argues that “the original name for the community of Jesus’s apprentices was ‘the Way’ or ‘followers of the Way” (24–25). He suggests that Jesus used “way” as a metaphor for apprenticeship to him. When Jesus says, “follow me,” he means, “Adopt my overall way of life to experience the life I have on offer” (25 [throughout this review, italics in quotations are always carried over from the original]). Jesus’s followers were called “the Way” because they followed Jesus’s way of life.
The entire book is premised on the idea that Jesus did not come to convert people to Christianity; he came to call people to a way of life (xvi). To be a disciple is fundamentally about walking with Jesus in the same way he walked. The point about Jesus’s apprentices originally being called “followers of the Way” is essential to Comer’s overall thesis.
There are, however, several problems with Comer’s argument.
For starters, there is no reason to give pride of place to the designation “the Way.” No New Testament epistle addresses God’s people as “followers of the Way.” Instead, they are more often addressed as saints, brothers, or the church. When the exalted Christ addresses God’s people in Asia Minor, he writes to them as “the church” (Revelation 2–3). Likewise, even though Paul says he persecuted “the Way” (Acts 9:2), he never uses the term as his own self-designation, preferring instead to call himself “a preacher and apostle and teacher” (2 Tim. 2:11). We should be cautious about turning Christian discipleship into “the Way” when the rest of the New Testament does not speak this language.
Moreover, even within the book of Acts, God’s people are called by many different terms. The earliest followers of Jesus were called brothers (Acts 1:16; 6:3), believers (Acts 2:44; 4:32; 5:14), the assembly or congregation (Acts 15:12, 30), the church (Acts 5:11), the disciples (Acts 6:1, 2, 7), and the saints (Acts 9:13, 32, 41). None of this means we can’t speak of “the Way.” This too was a term for God’s people in the book of Acts. But it was only one term among many, and by itself does not capture everything we need to say about following Jesus.
Most importantly, there is good reason to think “the Way” did not refer to a “way of life” and certainly not to a life of apprenticeship to Rabbi Jesus. At most, “way of life” is a secondary implication of the label. Most scholars believe “the Way” became a designation for early Christians because it was shorthand for phrases like “the way of salvation” (Acts 16:17), “the way of the Lord” (Acts 18:25), and “the way of God” (Acts 18:26). The language is an allusion to Isaiah 40:3 and the Messianic “way of the Lord” later announced by John the Baptist. In short, the early Christians were called followers of the Way, not first of all because they were apprentices to Jesus trying to do what he did, but because they believed Jesus was the long-awaited Christ and that in his name, and in his name alone, men might be saved (Acts 4:12). This is why we read that after Apollos was instructed in “the way of God more accurately” (Acts 18:26), he went on to show “by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus” (Acts 18:28).
This is also why the apostolic preaching in Acts never sounds like Peter or Paul inviting their hearers to become apprentices of Jesus to learn to do what he did. Instead, the preaching everywhere in Acts is about proving that Jesus is the Christ, that he fulfilled Old Testament prophecy, that he was crucified and rose again on the third day, and that the proper response to this message is faith and repentance. Of course, growth in Christlikeness is essential to being a genuine follower of Jesus, but Comer’s version of “the Way” leaves out what is primary and makes primary what is secondary.
I know Comer believes that Jesus is the Messiah, that he is God, that he died for our sins, and that he rose again from the dead. Comer acknowledges all this in the book, but these essential truths have almost no bearing on the overall project Comer is putting forward. What’s important is that the way of life in Jesus is beautiful and healing and what is best for us and for the world. Throughout the book, it is hard to see what difference it makes who exactly Jesus is and what he objectively accomplished for sinners. There is certainly no sense that “the Way” is about the way of salvation that saves us from coming judgment and from the wrath of God.
For example, Comer argues that John 14:6 is not about who is in or out, or who is going to hell. “It is far more likely” he insists, that Jesus “was saying that the marriage of his truth (his teaching) and his way (his lifestyle) is how to get to the with-God life he offers” (26). This novel interpretation fails to take into account the context of John 14, which is about believing in Jesus (14:1), and about how to go to the “place” that Jesus prepares for the disciples (14:2–4), and about how they come to know the Father (14:6), and about how they see the Father (14:9), and about how they too can go to the Father (14:12). Comer’s interpretation ignores all this and makes Jesus’s statement about his lifestyle. Whereas Comer makes John 14 about imitating the life of Jesus, Jesus wants to talk about intra-Trinitarian communion and eschatology and faith.
We see something similar in Comer’s interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. He takes the language of the “narrow gate” to be about finding the best way to live. “One interpretation of this teaching [about the narrow gate] is that only a few people are ‘going to heaven when they die’ and that everyone else is on the train to the eternal torture chamber” (26). Notice Comer’s use of language. He puts “going to heaven when they die” in scare quotes, and then he uses words like “train” and “eternal torture chamber” to make divine wrath sound absurd.
Instead of embracing the traditional understanding of Jesus’s words, Comer finds a different interpretation “more compelling,” namely that if you walk in the broad way of the majority culture, your life will fall to pieces, “never reaching your promise or potential” (27). I’d say “never reaching your promise or potential” is a pretty soft sell on the word “destruction,” especially when the context is clearly eschatological. Jesus is not simply talking about a dysfunctional life falling to pieces because of our poor choices. He is talking about “workers of lawlessness” who will be condemned by him on the day of judgment (Matt. 7:23). I don’t know what Comer believes about judgment and hell, but he often goes out of his way to explain away notions of divine wrath and punishment.
Let me give one final example of Comer reading foreign ideas into a familiar text. At the end of the chapter on being with Jesus, Comer cites Jesus’s invitation to “Come and see” (John 1:39). For Comer, this was Jesus’s way of telling his would-be disciples: “Come and live the Way with me for a while, and see whether life together in the kingdom of love is not far better than any other kingdom, whether this path is not better than any other path” (63). Even a cursory reading of John 1 demonstrates this is assuredly not what Jesus means by “Come and see.” John 1 begins with the astounding declaration that the Word was with God, the Word was God (1:1), and that this Word became flesh and dwelt among us (1:14). The chapter is about seeing the invisible God through the only begotten Son who makes the Father known (1:18). The chapter is about John’s announcement that Jesus is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world (1:29). The chapter is about Jesus as the stairway between heaven and earth (1:33) and Jesus as the Son of God (1:34).
The invitation to “come and see” is not about test-driving the way of kingdom love; it’s about discovering Jesus’s divine and messianic identity. That’s why Andrew says, “We have found the Messiah” (1:41) and why Nathaniel exclaims, “You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (1:49). It’s also why the chapter ends with Jesus referring to himself as the divine Son of Man from Daniel’s prophecy (1:51). Comer has taken a passage explicitly about the revelation of Jesus’s identity as the Christ, the Word made flesh, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the revelation of the Father’s glory, and the king of Israel, and turned it into a rather mundane message about discovering the best way to live. This is not a small interpretive misstep.
Go and Make Apprentices?
The second problem is Comer’s use of apprentice language. For starters, it is worth noting that no major English translation uses the word “apprentice” in Matthew 28:19 (or elsewhere). They all use the word “disciple.” I imagine Comer likes “apprentice” because the word sounds fresh and less familiar. The word makes our ears perk up a bit because it’s not in our normal Christian vocabulary.
Disciples and apprentices may both be learners, but the two terms are not identical and do not land on people the same way. Merriam-Webster defines “disciple” as “one who accepts and assists in spreading the doctrines of another.” Synonyms include follower, adherent, and convert. By contrast, Merriam-Webster defines “apprentice” as one who serves another for a period of time “with a view to learning an art or trade.” This is the depiction of following Jesus that Comer prefers. Comer wants to emphasize doing over believing, and he certainly doesn’t want to talk about conversion. Once we conceive of spiritual formation as apprenticeship—instead of, say, discipleship, or striving after godliness, or pursuing holiness, or bearing the fruit of the Spirit, or putting to death the deeds of the flesh, or obeying the law of God—we are well on our way to seeing the Christian life as fundamentally about learning how to do what Master Jesus does.
Notice also how the language of “apprenticeship” stresses Jesus as someone to imitate rather than someone to obey. In explaining the Great Commission, Comer says we must “Go and make apprentices of all kinds of people,” and that like a good rabbi, Jesus was raising up disciples (Comer uses the words “disciples” here) to carry on his teaching and his way of life (120). The casual reader may think, “Yeah, that’s basically the Great Commission in fresh language.” But missing from this description is anything about being incorporated into the church by baptism or anything about teaching the nations to obey everything Jesus has commanded. Inviting people into the Jesus way of life is not the same as teaching people to obey all that Jesus commanded.
In Matthew’s rich and textured account, Jesus is the divine lawgiver, clothed with all authority, standing on a mountain in Galilee with a commission to be obeyed, just as earlier his moral precepts were revealed in the Sermon on the Mount and his glory was revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration. In Comer’s telling, Matthew 28 is the culmination of Jesus’s plan of apprenticeship whereby he sends us out to do what Jesus would do if he were me (123).
Comer clearly believes that Jesus is more than a rabbi (xiv). And yet, it’s hard to see why Jesus would have to be more than an enlightened teacher for Comer’s project to hold together. At one point, Comer cites one of Jesus’s “critics” who chided Jesus for claiming to be God (7), but beyond this there is nothing about the deity of Christ. Comer quickly falls back to praising Jesus as “a brilliant, provocative, wise, spiritual master of how to live and thrive in our Father’s world” (7). As Comer says in the introduction, “apprenticing Jesus is the solution to the problem of the so-called human condition” (xv). Whether it is malaise, climate change, global war, epidemic, addiction, Christian nationalism, hypocrisy, or the inability to be kind, “There is no problem in human life that apprenticeship to Jesus cannot solve” (xv).
In Comer’s approach to spiritual formation, the (real) point of the Gospels—identifying who Jesus is, putting faith in him, and worshiping him—is put in the background, while living like Jesus is put in the foreground. This may seem like a small matter of emphasis, but there is no way to read any of the four Gospels and think that the central point is: solve the world’s problems by learning to live like Jesus. How effective can an approach to spiritual formation be when it almost completely misses the point of Jesus’s life and ministry? Matthew’s Gospel begins by showing that Jesus is the long-expected Son of Abraham and Son of David (Matt. 1:1), that he is Immanuel, God with us (Matt. 1:23), and that he came to save his people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). Mark’s Gospel starts with the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark 1:1), and it climaxes with the centurion’s confession “Truly, this man was the Son of God” at the foot of the cross (Mark 15:39). The Gospel of Luke ends with the disciples worshiping Jesus (Luke 24:52). And the Gospel of John is explicitly about believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing we may have life in his name (John 20:31). Jesus came into the world to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10) and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). That’s the big idea.
The glorious, exciting, scandalous, wonderful news of the gospel—Jesus as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, Jesus as our once and coming king, Jesus as the incarnate Son of God, Jesus as new Israel, Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world—becomes in Comer’s telling of the story a mere invitation to imitation. Comer argues that one way to determine the veracity of your gospel is to consider whether someone hearing your gospel would conclude “that apprenticeship to Jesus is the only fitting response” (23). While the gospel certainly entails a commitment to following Jesus, surely it is significant that when Jesus “came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God,” his message was not “become my apprentice,” but “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:14-15).
It is telling that Comer’s plan for spiritual formation has no discernible doctrine of regeneration. To be fair, he talks about the power of the Spirit enabling us to do what Jesus did. But there is no sense that essential to apprenticeship is Jesus’s command that we must be born again (John 3:3). By contrast, any biblical plan for spiritual formation must begin with the awareness that we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, we cannot be like Jesus, and we cannot live in the way of love, unless we who were dead in trespasses and were by nature children of wrath are made alive together with Christ (Eph. 2:1–5).
It would be unfair to say Comer’s book has no place for grace, but it is empowering, assisting grace, not sovereign, unilateral, monergistic grace. In a revealing section, Comer quotes from the Eastern Orthodox theologian Kallistos Ware, who explains that original sin means “we are born into an environment where it is easy to do evil and hard to do good.” He goes on to say that we are “conditioned by the solidarity of the human race in its accumulated wrong-doing and wrong-thinking, and hence wrong-being” (92). This is an accounting of original sin that has more in common with Pelagius than with Augustine. There is no language here of inherited guilt and depravity, only a warped environment that makes it hard to do good. Given this understanding of original sin, practicing the way may not require a new nature at all.
Perhaps this accounts for Comer’s frequent insistence that Jesus was not trying to convert people to Christianity.
- “Contrary to what many assume, Jesus did not invite people to convert to Christianity. He didn’t even call people to become Christians (keep reading. . . ); he invited people to apprentice under him into a whole new way of living to be transformed” (xvi).
- “Jesus is not looking for converts to Christianity; he’s looking for apprentices in the kingdom of God” (17).
- “Jesus’s invitation—as I have repeated ad nauseam—was not to convert to a new religion called Christianity but to apprentice under him into life in the kingdom of God.” (208)
To say that Jesus wasn’t trying to convert people to Christianity is one of those lines that is one-quarter true and three-quarters misleading. On the one hand, it would be anachronistic to suppose that Jesus came to sign people up to a religious label that didn’t exist yet. He was not trying to get people to check a different box on a sociological survey. And yet, the rhetorical force of Comer’s dichotomy pushes people in the wrong direction. Most people will read the lines above and conclude that Jesus wants us to be spiritual but not religious, and that identifying as a Christian is not important. Never mind that Paul did try to persuade King Agrippa to be a Christian (Acts 26:28) or that the language of repentance and new birth sounds a lot like conversion. What should we call it when Jesus summons his followers to believe in him (John 14:1), and believe certain truths about him (John 8:24), and believe certain things about the Bible (Matt. 5:17–18), and practice signs like baptism (Matt. 28:19) and the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:23–26), and to gather into communities called churches with designated leaders and methods for discipline (Matt. 18:15–20)—what should we call this invitation to a new way of thinking, believing, behaving, doing, and being if we do not call it Christianity?
Some people may be drawn to Comer’s project because they feel like “imitation of Christ” is a missing element in their Christian discipleship. I want to take this possible deficiency seriously. Looking to Jesus as our master example is appropriate, but only if we put imitation in the right place. That means we need a robust doctrine of the person of Christ (his eternality, his two natures, his three offices), and a robust doctrine of the work of Christ (his two states, his atoning sacrifice as substition and propitiation), and a robust doctrine of salvation (regeneration, faith and repentance, justification, adoption, and union with Christ). I understand that Comer did not set out to write a systematic theology. Fair enough. But he talks about almost none of this, and when he does it is either fuzzy or dismissive—like chiding Western Christians for thinking of Jesus as “a delivery mechanism for a particular theory of atonement” (5).
The stubborn fact is that the preaching of the apostles was not first of all an invitation into a way of life. It was the announcement of what Jesus had accomplished—in history, for sinners, by his death and resurrection. And apart from all that Jesus objectively accomplished for us, there is no plan of imitation that can save us from our sins or even produce the life change we all so desperately need. The irony is that for all of Comer’s emphasis on transformation, he is not nearly radical enough. A Christian is someone who has already been transferred from darkness to light, resurrected from death to life, and moved from the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God. In Comer’s telling of the Christian story, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” becomes “Christ in front of you, the example to follow.” By focusing almost exclusively on apprenticeship, and without placing this emphasis in a larger doctrinal context, Comer misses the change that has already happened in the Christian, and the change that must happen if we are to make any progress in imitating Christ.
Ancient or Very Modern?
A third problem is that Comer’s “Rule,” despite the appearance of being ancient, has very little connection to the practice of the early church. By itself, this criticism might qualify as a quibble, except that it highlights how Comer’s project is tailored to twenty-first-century, secular-leaning sensibilities. So when Comer talks about “preaching the gospel,” he is quick to admit that he has a “minor allergic reaction” to this language (134). He later clarifies that “preaching” might mean cooking a meal for your neighbor, or undertaking an act of quiet service in your city, or simply meeting people in their place of pain (137–38). When all of this qualifies as preaching, it’s hard to know what the word means anymore.
One could also mention the way the church fathers are quoted when they say something of a mystical nature without taking into account the explicitly (and intricately) theological nature of their thought. The likes of Ignatius, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and Maximus the Confessor (all cited by Comer) were instrumental in combating false teaching and carefully defending orthodox theology, especially related to the person of Christ. If one wants to retrieve the monkish sensibilities of many of our greatest theologians from the early church, we should also retrieve their zeal (and hard intellectual work) for presenting an exalted picture of Christ and for protecting the boundaries of doctrinal fidelity.
Nowhere are modern sensibilities more in view than in Comer’s description of the Rule. According to Comer, the earliest apprentices of Jesus were asking the same question we are asking today: how do we go about following Jesus in a way that we are transformed? And the answer they came up with is still the best answer. They developed a Rule, or a Rule of Life, which is “ancient language” for “a schedule and set of practices and relational rhythms that create space for us to be with Jesus, become like him, and do as he did, as we live in alignment with our deepest desires.” (160-61). The words “rule” and “way,” Comer argues, can be used interchangeably. Paul talked of his “way of life” in Christ Jesus, and a few centuries later, Saint Benedict developed a “rule.” These are different words meaning the same thing: “a plan to follow Jesus” (161).
The problem with Comer’s historical reconstruction—besides the fact that Paul’s use of “way” in 1 Corinthians 4:17 is about his example of fatherly maturity not about a set of practices and rhythms—is that the vibe of Comer’s rule is nothing like the vibe of Benedict’s Rule. On one level, of course, this is not a problem. Benedict doesn’t have a trademark on the word “Rule.” Comer can call his set of spiritual practices whatever he wants. But readers should not think they are adopting something ancient, when actually they are adopting something new.
Comer emphasizes that the Rule doesn’t mean “rules for life” (160). Quoting Rich Villodas, Comer insists that the Rule is “a set of practices, relationships, and commitments,” not “a list of rules” (161). Later, he stresses that the Rule is not a law. The difference: “A law is handed down from an external source, and it has very little flexibility.” By contrast, a rule “is self-generated from your internal desires, it has a ton of flexibility, it’s relationally based (not morally based), and it’s designed to index you toward your vision of the good life” (172). I applaud Comer for encouraging us to be intentional in our spiritual formation and to come up with a plan for following Jesus. But a self-generated, flexible, not morally based, vision of the good life that enables us to fulfill our deepest desires is not quite what Benedict had in mind. Here, for example, is the opening paragraph from The Rule of Saint Benedict:
Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart. This is advice from a father who loves you; welcome it, and faithfully put it into practice. The labor of obedience will bring you back to him from whom you had drifted through the sloth of disobedience. This message of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own will, once and for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of obedience to do battle for the true King, Christ the Lord. (Prologue)
Notice the stress on obedience. Central to Benedict’s Rule was the importance of the abbot. Wielding great authority as the vicar of Christ in the monastery, the abbot had to maintain strict discipline, sometimes correcting the disobedient “by blows or some other physical punishment” (2.28). Life in the monastery meant “unhesitating obedience” (5.1). The monks were steadfastly forbidden to do their own will (7.19). “In the monastery no one is to follow his own heart’s desire, nor shall anyone presume to contend with his abbot defiantly, or outside the monastery” (3.8–9). Life under Benedict’s rule was all about external authority and obeying laws, and not much about following your own self-generated plan.
If Christians today want to develop a strategy, in cooperation and accountability with other Christians, for taking a sabbath, cutting back on sugar, reducing screen time, and setting aside time for prayer and Scripture reading, that’s all to the good. And writing up a plan might help. But a flexible rule drawn from our internal desires will only be as good as our internal desires, and implementing a rule will only be a means of spiritual formation to the degree that our practices put us in the way of God’s established means of grace.
De-centering of the Word
This brings us to a final problem: Comer’s approach to spiritual formation undermines the uniqueness of God’s word by making Scripture just one of many pathways to God. This last point is the most practical of my four concerns, and it is also the most subtle. Comer believes in the importance of Scripture and studying the Bible. But like so much of the spiritual formation literature, there is a tendency to minimize what Scripture can do and a tendency to maximize the number of other things we can do to encounter God. Going to church, doing Bible studies, listening to sermons are all essential, Comer acknowledges, but by themselves they have a very poor track record of producing transformation (87). Yes, we need the Bible, but we need so much more.
According to Comer, “Anything can become a spiritual discipline if we offer it to God as a channel of grace” (179). Notice, he does not say that we can offer anything to God as an act of worship, or that we ought to do all things to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). Comer argues that anything can be offered to God as a channel of grace. Think about that. Does God really minister his grace through everything? Comer gives several examples: walking your dog, taking a spin class, visiting an elderly neighbor, driving in the slow lane, reading philosophy, writing a proof for physics. He says, “you can offer any of these activities to God in hope that he will fill those spaces with his transforming presence” (180). Later he argues that any habit you see in the life of Jesus—from walking in nature to climbing a mountain—can be used for spiritual formation (181).
This is where we need to understand what theologians mean by the ordinary means of grace. Yes, God can use driving in the slow lane to shape our character. But a life lesson about being more patient is not by itself a channel of grace, just as walking the dog is not by itself filled with the transforming presence of Jesus. Many believers will rightly testify to God’s grace in holding a newborn infant, or in laughing with friends, or in watching a sunset. But these experiences—no matter how enjoyable or beneficial—are not means of grace in themselves. Certain experiences may be used by God, but they only communicate grace insofar as they are interpreted in light of God’s word or bring to mind what we know from God’s word.
Comer encourages us to take into account our spiritual temperaments. To that end, he cites approvingly the nine spiritual temperaments from Gary Thomas. Each temperament is said to provide “its own unique pathway to God,” so that naturalists love God by being outdoors, sensates love God with candles and incense, activists love God by fighting injustice, enthusiasts love God with music and dance, and so on. Comer emphasizes that no one approach is better than another, and that we should not moralize our preferences. In fact, Comer calls us to expand our horizons and “explore new pathways to God” (184–85).
This gets very muddy. Do we all have different personalities? For sure. Do some of us like to be outside, and some of us like to read books, and some of us like to care for others? Yes. Can we demonstrate our love for God by offering all of these things before him as an act of worship?
Absolutely. But do we really want to say these are all “pathways to God”? If so, what is a “pathway” except different things people enjoy and different ways in which people feel spiritual? The Canaanites believed in many pathways to encountering the divine. So did pagan Romans in the first century. The Judeo-Christian tradition, on the other hand, has always insisted that God cannot be worshiped in any way we please, and that God does not want us to seek him out except in the ways he has told us he can be found.
Comer teaches that the way to be with Jesus is to abide in Jesus. He notes that “abide” translates the Greek word meno, which is used ten times in John 15. According to Comer, when Jesus says “abide in me” he is saying, “Make your home in my presence by the Spirit, and never leave” (37). Being an apprentice of Jesus is about letting your body become God’s home. Jesus calls this abiding (39). Paul calls it praying without ceasing. Others from the mystical tradition refer to the same thing as “silent love,” or “continuous inner act of abiding,” or “centering down,” or “the sacrament of the present moment.” Comer’s favorite description of abiding is from Brother Lawrence: “the practice of the presence of God” (40).
And how do we abide in Jesus? We direct the inner gaze of our hearts onto his love (46). We look at God, and he looks at us, in love (47). Or in the words of Marjorie Thompson: “I look at him, He looks at me, and we are happy” (46, 50). Notice the road we have traveled. Comer has gone from the biblical language of abiding, to practicing the presence of God, to you and God looking at each other in love. On this reading, John 15 is a discourse on the mystical contemplation of the divine being.
But that’s not what Jesus means by abiding in him. In John 15:7, Jesus uses two concepts interchangeably: abiding in him and his words abiding in us. Jesus is with us when his word is with us, and we are in him when his words are in us. There is an intimate connection between the person of the Word of God and the words of God in speech and in Scripture. God created by means of the eternal Logos—his wisdom, his speech, his voice, his word. The eternal Logos is the mediating agent in creation, in redemption, and in revelation, whether by means of the word spoken (and later written down) or by means of the Word made flesh. This means that if we drink deeply and often from the Scriptures—not for mere head knowledge, but in heartfelt worship and in thoughtful contemplation—then Jesus will abide in us.
Conclusion
I know that most people reading John Mark Comer are likely not Reformed, so many of them will not care whether that label applies to his project (in fact, they may be glad if it doesn’t!). But most people who read Kevin DeYoung probably are Reformed. And to those people I want to underline—gently, but clearly—that Practicing the Way is not a Reformed approach to spiritual formation. If the genius of the book is that it can be laid on top of almost any broadly Christian tradition, that is also the book’s biggest danger. Because the theology lacks definition (and is generally kept in the background), and because the ethics aren’t more developed than a general call to love, and because the Rule is self-generated and focused on personal goals, the reader is free to fill in the gaps with whatever doctrinal, ecclesiastical, and moral commitments he sees fit. Some ideas may fit with Reformed theology, but the overall approach is unlike what we find in our best Reformed, devotional writers.
I get why people may find Practicing the Way refreshing. The book is engaging, relatable, and accessible. Comer is likeable, genuine, and I believe he sincerely wants to help people do what Jesus would do.
On top of that, Reformed Christians may be drawn to the book because they are in a church without “experimental” Calvinism or without any emphasis on the affections. Maybe the preaching is dry and overly intellectual. Maybe the preacher has been so afraid of moralism that he does not dare hold up Paul or the apostles or Old Testament saints—or Jesus!—as examples to follow and imitate. Maybe no one has taken the time to demonstrate that right doctrine is the foundation for life-changing, long-lasting, spiritual transformation. I suspect some Calvinists think Reformed Christianity is good for getting your theological house in order, but not so good for living a vibrant life within that house.
If that’s what you are feeling, I want to assure you that there is a Reformed approach to spiritual formation. It focuses on the Bible, on prayer, and on Scriptural contemplation. Read Matthew Bingham’s new book, A Heart Aflame, if you want an explanation. Then go back and read the Puritans and the Reformers on the Christian life. Read Precious Remedies against Satan’s Devices by Thomas Brooks. Read Archibald Alexander on religious experience. Read J.C. Ryle on holiness. Pick up one of Jonathan Gibson’s books as a daily liturgy. Pray along with The Valley of Vision. Get an old edition of the Book of Common Prayer and incorporate it into your spiritual life.
If you want to try the ancient paths, devote yourself to the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer, for these three elements have been the backbone of the church’s catechesis for more than 1,500 years. There are lots of resources—focused on the word and prayer—to help refresh what may have grown stale.
And above all, remember Jesus’s inspired plan for spiritual formation: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17).
Kevin DeYoung is the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church (PCA) in Matthews, North Carolina and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary.
