Notes on Life Together
- Posted by Julee Huy
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A LITTLE FIND
Our church has been studying some weighty matters together. The matters sent me digging around our home library for some old textbooks for reference. During my search, I stumbled upon a skinny hard-covered journal, containing a detailed handwritten outline of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together. I’ve been privileged to have studied through Life Together several times and to have taught it. I suppose that on one of these occasions, I thought writing out these notes would be helpful. At this juncture in the life of our church, when we are digesting doctrine which can prove divisive, these notes may prove helpful again.
FINKENWALDE
Life Together is a physically tiny work, just over a hundred pages in most editions. If my notes intrigue you, and especially if they confuse you, simply pick up the book! Deitrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor, theologian and professor, whose life and work coincided with the rise of the Nazi regime. He was one of the founding members of the Confessing Church, which comprised of Christians who opposed the Nazi takeover of church personnel and teachings to promote its own ideology of the ideal “German-Christian.” Life Together, which is a meditation on the Bible’s teachings about Christian community, was written following an intense two year period during which Bonhoeffer taught a group of men in a clandestine seminary. The band of twenty-five lived every day holed up together in the Brothers’ House in Finkenwalde from 1935-1937. The seminary was then shut down by the Nazis, and Bonhoeffer would later be martyred at the hands of the regime for his part in the Resistance.
CHAPTER 1: COMMUNITY
What is Christian fellowship? It is how we respond to being together in Christ. Fellowship is a privilege only to be had in the Body of Christ, because it can only be had through Christ and in Christ. We are seeds of the Kingdom scattered and gathered in Christ (Zech. 10:8-9)
We need others because of Jesus Christ. A Christian is someone who no longer seeks his deliverance in himself but in Christ. The Word comes to him and offers him an “alien righteousness.” This Word is put into the mouths of men in order that it may be communicated to other men, necessitating fellowship. The Christian needs other Christians who speak the Word to him continually (1 John 4:12). When we are discouraged, we cannot help ourselves without belying the truth. We need a brother as the bearer of the divine Word of salvation. The goal of all Christian community is to meet together as bringers of the message of salvation. This is fellowship founded solely upon “alien righteousness” from Jesus Christ, which is through grace alone (Eph. 2:8-10). This grace is the basis of Christians’ longing for one another.
We come to others only through Jesus Christ. There is strife among men. Jesus is our mediator; without Him, we know neither God nor man. The way is blocked by our own ego and sin. Christians come to love one another and live together only by way of Jesus Christ. In Christ, we have been chosen and eternally united. The Christian has the eternal counsel of the triune God, and we are one in Him: incarnation, cross, resurrection (Gal. 2:20). We were made to belong together in eternity long before we knew or wished it. When we look at a brother or sister, we should remember that we will be united eternally with him in Christ. We approach others not for what that man is in himself or as a Christian, but by what that man is by reason of Christ.
The supreme example of brotherly love is in Jesus, who offered forgiveness instead of judgment to us (Romans 15:7). In other words, the more meager our love is for our fellow believer, the less we are living by God’s love and mercy. I can be a sister to another person through what Christ did for me and only through that.
This eliminates the danger of confusing Christian fellowship with wishful idea of religious fellowship. Fellowship is not an ideal but a divine reality. God will not abandon us to our lofty moods of what Christian life should be. We will be disillusioned from trying to realize our own dreams. Even with good and honest intentions, if we love our ideals more than the community, we will be the destroyer of the latter. We will become proud and pretentious, demanding our own terms from God and others and ourselves. If our terms are not met, we will judge everything, becoming a living reproach. The danger is the playing of God and eventually, resembling the accuser.
We enter as thankful recipients, not demanders. God has already established our fellowship, so we don’t need to complain of things that God doesn’t give us, but we can be thankful for the things He does give us daily. What we have is enough, which are brothers who will go on living with us through sin and need under grace. In the worst of times, a brother is still a brother with whom we stand under the Word of God.
Disillusionment with a brother is good; it is a reminder that neither of us can live by our words and deeds, but only by Christ’s Word and deed. It is only when we give thanks for small things that we can have big things (Mt 25:14-30; Lk 14:15-24). Do not complain about fellowship, not to God and not to others. Give thanks even when there’s great weakness and small faith. The exclusion of the weaker member may be exclusion of Christ. Community is like sanctification, in that only God knows the truth. It is a gift that we can’t claim. The reality is created by God in which we are participants. The ground, strength, promise of all fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone. The more we can accept spiritual reality, the more serenely we can think of fellowship, and pray and hope for it.
If a person feels alienated from the community in which she’s been placed and begins to have complaints, she must examine herself first. Is the trouble with a wish dream? If not, nevertheless she can make intercession for the brethren in consciousness of her own guilt. In community, simply do what we have committed to do and thank God.
The Human community vs. Spiritual Reality:
Human community comes from natural urges, powers, capacities of the human spirit. Men bind men to each other according to abilities. When weak submit to the strong and not to Christ Himself, this equates to conversion by men. Human community loves the other person for her own sake. It loves only a person bound to itself, who fits the construct of what it tells her to be, not a free person. It is incapable of loving an enemy. Human community cultivates and nurses ideals and makes itself the end. Human community is full of hothouse flowers.
By contrast, spiritual reality is based in the clear, manifest Word of God, Who stands between us and others and explains the meaning of love. It delights in truth, and loves the brother for Christ’s sake. It is marked by simple, humble service. It frees others to retain their individuality from me and be Christ’s. It meets the fellow believer only as a person that he already is in Christ. It does not take pleasure in pious, human fervor and excitement. It allows fruit to be borne according to God’s will. It realizes that the most direct way to another is through Christ.
It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood, but solid and certain faith in brotherhood that holds us together…For Jesus Christ alone is our unity (Bonhoeffer, Life Together).
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