Life Together

Bonhoeffer insisted that Christian communities could not allow God’s will to be merely an abstract idea or smothered in institutional, dogmatic, or biblical reductionism. His spiritual classics Discipleship and Life Together were thus given a realistic embodiment in their most tangible form, the Christian community.

Bonhoeffer realized that many seek community because they fear loneliness, cannot endure being alone, cannot cope with life on their own, or have been scarred by bad experiences and seek help in the company of others.

It will respect the boundary of the other, which is placed between us by Christ, and it will find full community with the other in the Christ who alone binds us together. This spiritual love will thus speak to Christ about the other Christian more than to the other Christian about Christ.

Those who want more than what Christ has established between us do not want Christian community. They are looking for some extraordinary experiences of community that were denied them elsewhere.

Those who look at other Christians should know that they will be eternally united with them in Jesus Christ. Christian community means community through and in Jesus Christ.

In what follows we will take a look at several directions and principles that the Holy Scriptures give us for life together [gemeinsame Leben] under the Word.

First, Christian community is not an ideal, but a divine reality; second, Christian community is a spiritual [pneumatisch] and not an emotional [psychisch] reality.

Because God already has laid the only foundation of our community, because God has united us in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that life together with other Christians, not as those who make demands, but as those who thankfully receive.

It is out of this love that John the disciple speaks: “I have no greater joy than this, to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 4).