Christian, Be a Gardener

Can you imagine what it would’ve been like to live in God’s garden and walk with him “in the cool of the day” (Gen. 3:8)? Imagine being the Lord’s appointed gardener in Eden, commissioned by God himself to “work it and keep it” (2:15). Living in God’s presence among lush vegetation, hypnotically vibrant flowers, and weather that was always perfect. No weeds, drought, or pests, so your labor always resulted in a full harvest.

Now, when you imagine Eden, have you considered how our gardening work continues today? While all human lives are marked by sin this side of the fall, believers are still called to work as God’s gardeners. One fundamental way we garden is as members of our local churches.

Garden Paradise, Given and Promised

Human history began in a garden. God formed Adam and Eve in his image, and he commissioned them to exercise dominion by expanding the borders of Eden to fill the earth (Gen. 1:28–30, 9:1–3). God wanted people to turn the entire world into a garden paradise where he would walk with them (3:8; Lev. 26:12).

Since the fall, we’ve been barred from Eden. We’re all born separated from God, cast out from his presence (Gen. 3:24). But God wasn’t done dwelling in a garden with his people. Scripture makes clear that he still plants a garden for himself, a kingdom of priests who put his rule on display in the world.

Throughout the Old Testament, the theme of God dwelling with his people in a garden emerges again and again. Here are three examples:

• God commissions Adam to “work” and “keep” the garden (2:15). Those same gardening verbs are used when God instructs Moses about the priests’ duties in the tabernacle and temple (Num. 3:7–8; 8:25–26; 18:5–6; 1 Chron. 23:32; Ezek. 44:14).
• God uses garden imagery to describe the tabernacle and the temple themselves. The lampstand, for example, is modeled after the tree of life (Gen. 2:9; Ex. 25:31–40). The wood carvings in the temple should also remind us of Eden (1 Kings 6:18, 29).
• Later biblical authors show how the river flowing out of Eden (Gen. 2:10) points to the life-giving rivers that will flow from the temple in the new heavens and earth (Ps. 36:8–9; Ezek. 47:1–12; Rev. 21:1–2; 22:1–2).

God’s Garden, His People

The prophets often use garden imagery to teach God’s people about who they are, what God has done for them, and what he will do for them in the future. They look forward to the fulfillment of God’s plan of redemption, a plan that culminates with his making them into a garden where he dwells.

Scripture makes clear that God still plants a garden for himself, a kingdom of priests who put his rule on display in the world.

In Isaiah 5:1–7, for example, the prophet uses a gardening analogy to explain how the Lord will discipline his people for their disobedience. He concludes with this warning: “For the vineyard [or garden] of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry!” (v. 7).

Later, Isaiah uses the same garden imagery but promises that redemption will come: “For the LORD comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD” (Isa. 51:3; see Ezek. 36; Joel 2:3).

The Old Testament pattern is clear: God is making a new garden, one to which the tabernacle and temple pointed. In that new Eden, the Lord will dwell with his people again, and they will once again serve as his priestly gardeners.

Christ, the True Gardener

The New Testament takes all these themes and shows how they culminate in Christ. A staggering number of Jesus’s parables include agricultural examples. In the parable of the tenants, for example, Jesus presents the Father as a farmer and himself as the farmer’s rejected son. Jesus inherits the farm, the fruit-bearing vineyard that is his people (Matt. 21:33–46). Then, through his death and resurrection, Jesus makes a way for those who were far from God to dwell in his presence again. He welcomes us back into the Holy of Holies, into the garden.

Jesus is buried in a garden (John 19:41), and after the resurrection when Mary Magdalene comes to the empty tomb, she makes a false assumption that’s nevertheless a vibrant depiction of Jesus’s identity. She “[supposes] him to be the gardener” (20:15).

Here at last is the True Gardener emerged from his garden-tomb as the firstfruits of the new creation. Christ’s empty tomb is the beachhead of the Lord’s eternal garden. And as the good news of his resurrection spreads, so too does this new Eden.

The Church, the Lord’s Garden

Where is this garden now? Where the Lord dwells. Christ dwells by his Spirit in each of his redeemed people (Rom. 6; Eph. 1). And he dwells in us corporately as his church (Matt. 16:19; 18:20).

Jesus makes this explicit in John 15. Because of our union with Christ, the church is the Lord’s vine. He tends to his people and gives them his life so they grow spiritual fruit. This was the Old Testament promise, and it’s fulfilled in Christ.

In the Old Testament, the Lord’s presence is depicted as a shining lamp in the tabernacle with seven lampstands around it (Num. 8:1–2). Revelation shows that tree-of-life imagery’s fulfillment in local churches (see 1:12–13, 20). Paul also uses gardening imagery to describe local church life: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Cor. 3:6). These shining lights—these city-on-a-hill communities of redeemed, repentant sinners—are the joy-giving, life-sustaining garden of God.

God’s people are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Pet. 2:9), and we tend the Lord’s garden-church together. As Jonathan Leeman writes, “Church membership . . .  makes your priest-king job assignment public and practical.”

Get Your Hands Dirty in the Lord’s Garden

Are you tempted to be impatient with fellow church members? Impatience can reveal that we think of the church as a grocery store that caters to our desires. Yet the church and our relationships within it are a garden to be tended. Take James’s exhortation to heart: “Be patient . . . until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth” (James 5:7). Trust the Lord to bring the “early and the late rains” in believers’ hearts.

Christ’s empty tomb was the beachhead of the Lord’s eternal garden. And as the good news of his resurrection spread, so too did this new Eden.

All Christians are called to garden work, and pastors are called to model it—to labor diligently like farmers as we cultivate the health of the saints under our care. (2 Tim. 2:6). Our churches are “God’s field” (1 Cor. 3:9). This simple truth should reorient the way all Christians view the church.

Are you cultivating the local garden where the Lord has placed you? Do you see fellow believers as souls to tend? Are you getting to know the saints in your church the way a careful gardener knows the seasons and needs of particular plants? As we use our gifts to minister to one another (Eph. 4:11–13), we’re tending, watering, weeding, pruning, and trusting that the Lord of the harvest, the final Gardener, will bring growth.

Dear Christian, don’t be a consumer. Embrace the good call of the Lord: Be a gardener.