What Lutheran Christians Hold Dear

What Lutheran Christians Hold Dear

As Lutheran Christians, we both celebrate the whole body of Christ throughout the world and joyously hold to these Scriptural themes as the bedrock for our faith:

–We are at once sinners and saints. The walk of faith does not remove our human propensity to hurt ourselves, our neighbors, and Gods creation—sometimes in powerful ways.  We rest in the hope, however, that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.  The Risen Christ is present with us in all times, in all of our choices and actions, forgiving us, upholding us, and both calling us to and giving us the gift of new hearts, through which we ourselves living in a new way.  A way of faith, and hope, and love.

–We are saved by grace through faith.  We don’t choose, make, or establish our relationship with God, whether by making better decisions about our lives, living more moral lives, or dedicating ourselves once and for all as people of faith. We have been loved into relationship with God by God, working in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.   That love carries us into and sustains us in a trust that enables a deep relationship with God, through thick and thin. God initiates, in Christ: by and through that initiation, we find the gift and will to joyfully respond in heart, in mind, and in spirit.

-We know the power of the Cross and Resurrection.  Suffering and pain are part of life.  Sometimes, living the life of faith active in love brings us closer to pain—as it did with Jesus.  In everything and in all, however, God works, in Christ, to make “all things new” (Revelation 21).  As we stand, both feet in the mud, God is there, in Christ, working beneath that mud to bring us to the hope of Resurrection and Life–  a hope and promise that begins now, in this day, continues for the whole of our lives, and is brought to all fullness in the Day to Come.

-Holy Baptism and Holy Communion are “visible signs of invisible grace.” God comes, through Holy Spirit, in the waters of Baptism to promise that we belong to God, find our hope in Christ, and are called to be light for the World, and Salt for the earth.  In Holy Communion Christ comes to us “in, with, and under” the bread and the wine, truly present for and with us, forgiving us, and bringing us into life.