“How very good and pleasant it is when brethren live together in unity!”
Psalm 133:1
In what follows we will take a look at several directions and principles that the Holy Scriptures give us for life together under the Word.
The privilege of living among other Christians
The Christian cannot simply take for granted the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. In the end all his disciples abandoned him. On the cross he was all alone, surrounded by criminals and the jeering crowds. He had come for the express purpose of bringing peace to the enemies of God. So Christians, too, belong not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the midst of enemies. There they find their mission, their work. “To rule is to be in the midst of your enemies. And whoever will not suffer this does not want to be part of the rule of Christ; such a person wants to be among friends and sit among the roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the religious people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing, who would ever have been saved?” (Luther).
“Though I scattered them among the nations, yet in far countries they shall remember me” (Zechariah 10:9). According to God’s will, the Christian church is a scattered people, scattered like seed “to all the kingdoms of the earth” (Deuteronomy 28:25). That is the curse and its promise. God’s people must live in distant lands among the unbelievers, but they will be the seed of the kingdom of God in all the world.
“I will … gather them in. For I have redeemed them, … and they shall … return”
Zechariah 10:8–9
When will that happen? It has happened in Jesus Christ, who died “to gather into one the dispersed children of God” (John 11:52), and ultimately it will take place visibly at the end of time when the angels of God will gather God’s elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other (Matthew 24:31). Until then, God’s people remain scattered, held together in Jesus Christ alone, having become one because they remember him in the distant lands, spread out among the unbelievers.
Thus in the period between the death of Christ and the day of judgment, when Christians are allowed to live here in visible community with other Christians, we have merely a gracious anticipation of the end time. It is by God’s grace that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly around God’s word and sacrament in this world.
Not all Christians partake of this grace. The imprisoned, the sick, the lonely who live in the diaspora, the proclaimers of the gospel in heathen lands stand alone. They know that visible community is grace. They pray with the psalmist:
“I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival”
Psalm 42:5
But they remain alone in distant lands, a scattered seed according to God’s will.
Yet what is denied them as a visible experience they grasp more ardently in faith. Hence “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day” (Revelation 1:10) the exiled disciple of the Lord, John the author of the Apocalypse, celebrates the worship of heaven with its congregations in the loneliness of the Island of Patmos. He sees the seven lampstands that are the congregations, the seven stars that are the angels of the congregations, and in the midst and above it all, the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, in his great glory as the risen one. He strengthens and comforts John by his word. That is the heavenly community in which the exile participates on the day of his Lord’s resurrection.
The visible presence of other Christians
The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer. With great yearning the imprisoned apostle Paul calls his “beloved son in the faith,” Timothy, to come to him in prison in the last days of his life. He wants to see him again and have him near. Paul has not forgotten the tears Timothy shed during their final parting (2 Timothy 1:4). Thinking of the congregation in Thessalonica, Paul prays “night and day … most earnestly that we may see you face to face” (1 Thessalonians 3:10). The aged John knows his joy in his own people will only be complete when he can come to them and speak to them face to face instead of using paper and ink (2 John 12).
The believer need not feel any shame when yearning for the physical presence of other Christians, as if one were still living too much in the flesh. A human being is created as a body; the Son of God appeared on earth in the body for our sake and was raised in the body. In the sacrament the believer receives the Lord Christ in the body, and the resurrection of the dead will bring about the perfected community of God’s spiritual-physical creatures. Therefore, the believer praises the Creator, the Reconciler and the Redeemer, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the bodily presence of the other Christian.
The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian living in the diaspora recognizes in the nearness of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God. In their loneliness, both the visitor and the one visited recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body. They receive and meet each other as one meets the Lord, in reverence, humility, and joy. They receive each other’s blessings as the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if there is so much happiness and joy even in a single encounter of one Christian with another, what inexhaustible riches must invariably open up for those who by God’s will are privileged to live in daily community life with other Christians!
This quote is excerpted from Life Together, Chapter 1, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Translated from German to English by Daniel Bloesch. New English-language edition translation with new supplementary material published by Fortress Press in 1996 as part of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works. First published in English as Life Together copyright © 1954 Harper and Row Publishers, Inc. First published in German as Gemeinsames Leben by Chr. Kaiser Verlag in 1939.
Top image credit: Beautiful tree and field on the hill with colorful sky, from Bigstock.com, illustration © by Atthidej Nimmanhaemin, stock photo ID: 48103670. Used with permission. Quote from Psalm 133:1 added.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a German Lutheran pastor and a founding member of the Confessing Church. He was the first of the German theologians to speak out clearly against the persecution of the Jews and the evils of the Nazi ideology. In spring of 1935 Dietrich Bonhoeffer was called by the Confessing Church in Germany to take charge of an “illegal,” underground seminary at Finkenwalde, Germany (now Poland). He served as pastor, administrator, and teacher there until the seminary was closed down by Hitler’s Gestapo in September,1937.
In the seminary at Finkenwalde Bonhoeffer taught the importance of shared life together as disciples of Christ. He was convinced that the renewal of the church would depend upon recovering the biblical understanding of the communal practices of Christian obedience and shared life. This is where true formation of discipleship could best flourish and mature.
Bonhoeffer’s teaching led to the formation of a community house for the seminarians to help them enter into and learn the practical disciplines of the Christian faith in community. In 1937 Bonhoeffer completed two books, Life Together and The Cost of Discipleship. They were first published in German in 1939. Both books encompass Bonhoeffer’s theological understanding of what it means to live as a Christian community in the Body of Christ.
He was arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo in April 1943. On April 8, 1945 he was hanged as a traitor in the Flossenburg concentration camp. As he left his cell on his way to execution he said to his companion, “This is the end – but for me, the beginning of life.”