The Greenhouse for Faith: What We Grow Here is Meant to be Planted in the World
There are four pillars that will be used in this greenhouse: Christ, Word, Faith, and Grace that help us understand the God who is our foundation. We talked in the previous sessions about how we come to know about God in Christ and through the Word and how God’s gift of faith opens us to be a part of what God is doing in the world.
The final pillar is grace which brings us back to the God who we come to know in Christ, through the scriptures interpreted through the key of Christ, and through God’s gift of faith which opens us up and reveals to us the gracious God who we come to know in creation, in Christ’s redemption, and through God’s continuing presence in our lives and in the world.
What do we mean by grace? Grace is God’s love which we come to encounter most centrally in Christ. It is the forgiving love that even when it is rejected does not let go of those who rejected it. It is a love that is willing to suffer for those that it cares about. It is the love that is summed up in what Luther called the gospel in miniature in John 3:16 where (to paraphrase) God so loved the world that God sent that which was most precious to God, the Son, God’s very self, to the world that God loves so that we may know that God loves the world and God loves us.
We live in light of this grace. We have been set free to live in light of this grace.
We live in a tension as people who are set free but also also people who follow a gracious God who comes to serve. As Luther expressed it:
“A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.
A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant to all, subject to all.” The Freedom of a Christian (1520)
If we follow Jesus we follow a Lord who reminds us that he came not to be served but to serve, and we as followers of Jesus live our lives in service to this world and the people that God loves.
Questions for reflection:
- How would you describe Grace in your own words?
- What are some of the tensions in your own life that you live with?
- When is responding to God’s grace easy in your own life? When is it hard?