Life Together

Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood the value of authentic Christian community. 

Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who dearly loved his flock.  Ever since Hitler's rise to power in 1933 Bonhoeffer was on the run.  In 1938 he was banned from his home town of Berlin.  During this season of persecution he wrote a book called Life Together. 

He begins with Psalm 133:1, "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!"

Bonhoeffer believed that authentic Christian community is a gift from God the Father and we should thank him for his grace. 

Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of his heart.  Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren. (20)

If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ. (29)

Bonhoeffer also believed that authentic Christian community exists through and in Jesus.  Real community revolves around Jesus.

Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. (21)
Only in Jesus Christ are we one, only through him are we bound together. (24) 
The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us. (26) 
For Jesus Christ alone is our unity. (39)

Bonhoeffer believed that authentic Christian community is held together by the Holy Spirit.  He referred to "the community of the Spirit."

The basis of the community of the Spirit is truth.  The essence of the community of the Spirit is light.  The community of the Spirit is the fellowship of those who are called by Christ. (31)

Authentic Christian community must be built on the Word of God.

The Christian lives wholly by the truth of God's Word.  And that also clarifies the goal of all Christian community: they meet one another as bringers of the message of salvation.  When one person is struck by the Word, he speaks it to others. (22-23)

Authentic Christian community is just weak, ordinary sinners who become brothers forever.

He who looks upon his brother should know that he will be eternally united with him in Jesus Christ. (24)

We thank God for giving us brethren who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and His promise.  We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what He does give us daily.  And is not what has been given us enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of His grace?  Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ?  Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? (28)

*all quotes taken from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (New York: Harper, 1954)