Help please

God made humans for relationships; with Him; and with each other. Good and godly friendships are a blessing from the LORD.

In 200-300 words, discuss at least two aspects you learned about friendship you learned in the material from this week. Reflect on your own life in light of that material. Perhaps the material made you realize you could be a better friend in a certain way? Or you now have a new ideal of friendship in mind? Perhaps it makes you reflect on former friendships you wished would have been different?

The posts should be appropriately formatted, with proper grammar, as well as citation using a (parentheses) at the end of a sentence that draws on class material. REMEMBER, you want to demonstrate that you have read, understood, and can appropriately apply the materials from this week.

Wisdom on Friendship: Friendship in the Book of Proverbs

Proverbs 17:17: A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need.

Proverbs 18:24: There are “friends” who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks
closer than a brother.

Proverbs 16:28: A troublemaker plants seeds of strife; gossip separates the best of
friends.

Proverbs 17:9: Disregarding another person’s faults preserves love; telling about them
separates close friends.

Proverbs 18:19: It’s harder to make amends with an offended friend than to capture a
fortified city. Arguments separate friends like a gate locked with iron bars.

Proverbs 26:18-19: Just as damaging as a mad man shooting a lethal weapon is someone
who lies to a friend and then says, “I was only joking.”

Proverbs 12:26: The godly give good advice to their friends; the wicked lead them
astray.

Proverbs 22:24-25: Keep away from angry, short-tempered people, or you will learn to
be like them and endanger your soul.

Proverbs 3:32: Wicked people are an abomination to the LORD, but he offers his
friendship to the godly.

Life

Together

Life

Together
The Classic Exploration of Christian

Community

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Translated. and with an Introduction by John W. Doberstein

•
Harper One

An bnprint ofHarpcrCollinsPublishers

,
Ha.rperOne

LIFE TOGETHER: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community.
Copyright © 1954 by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
Primed in rhe United Srares of America. No parr of rhis book may be
used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever wirhour written permission
except in rhe case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and
reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd
Street, New York, NY 10022.

This book was originally published in Germany under the ride of
GEMEINSAMES LEBEN.

HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales
promotional use. For information please write: Special Markers Department,
HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Srreer, New York, NY 10022.

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HarperCollins Publishers.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-5848

ISBN 978-0-06-060852-1

12 13 RRD(H) 90 89 88 87 86 85 84 83 82

C H A P T E R O N E

Community

“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to
dwell together in unity!” (Ps. 1 3 3 : 1 ) . In the following we
shall consider a number of directions and precepts that the
Scriptures provide us for our life together under the Word.

It is not simply to be taken for granted that ·the Christian
has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus
Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his
disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone,
surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had
come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Chris­
tian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but
in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work.
“The Kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And
he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the
Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit
among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the

17

18 L I F E T O G E T H E R

devout people. 0 you blasphemers and betrayers of Quist!
If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever
have been spared?” (Luther).

“I will sow them among the people: and they shall re­
member me in far countries” (Zech. 10:9). According to
God’s will Christendom is a scattered people, scattered like
seed “into all the kingdoms of the earth” (Deut. 2 8: 15).
That is its curse and its promise. God’s people must dwell
in far countries among the unbelievers, but it will be the
seed of the Kingdom of God in all the world.

“I will … gather them; for I have redeemed them:
… and they shall return” (Zech. 10:8, 9). When will that
happen? It has happened in Jesus Christ, who died “that he
should gather together in one the children of God that were
scattered abroad” (john 11:p), and it will finally occur
visibly at the end of time when the angels of God “shall
gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end
of heaven to the other” (Matt. 24: 3 1). Until then, God’s
people remain scattered, held together solely in Jesus Christ,
having become one in the fact that, dispersed among un­
believers, they remember Him in the far countries.

So between the death of Christ and the Last Day it is
only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Chris­
tians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other
Christians. It is by the grace of God that a congregation is
permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God’s
Word and sacrament. Not all Christians receive this bless­
ing. The imprisoned, the sick, the scattered lonely, the
proclaimers of the Gospel in heathen lands stand alone.
They know that visible fellowship is a blessing. They re­
member, as the Psalmist did, how they went “with the

C O MMU N I T Y 19

multitude . . . to the house of God, with the voice of joy
and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday” (Ps. 42:4).
But they remain alone in far countries, a scattered seed ac­
cording to God’s will. Yet what is denied them as an actual
experience they seize upon more fervently in faith. Thus
the exiled disciple of the Lord, John the Apocalyptist, cele­
brates in the loneliness of Patmos the heavenly worship
with his congregations “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day”
(Rev. 1: 1 o) . He sees the seven candlesticks, his congrega­
tions, the seven stars, the angels of the congregations, and in
the midst and above it all the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, in
all the splendor of the resurrection. He strengthens and
fortifies him by His Word. This is the heavenly fellow­
ship, shared by the exile on the day of his Lord’s resurrec­
tion.

The physical presence of other Christians is a source of
incomparable joy and strength to the believer. Longingly,
the imprisoned apostle Paul calls his “dearly beloved son in
the faith,” Timothy, to come to him in prison in the last
days of his life; he would see him again and have him near.
Paul has not forgotten the tears Timothy shed when last
they parted (II Tim. 1:4). Remembering the congregation
in Thessalonica, Paul prays “night and d1y . . . exceed­
ingly that we might see your face” (I Thess. 3: r o) . The
aged John knows that his joy will not be full until he can
come to his own people and speak face to face instead of
writing with ink (II John u) .

The believer feels no shame, as though he were still living
too much in the flesh, when he yearns for the physical
presence of other Christians. Man was created a body, the
Son of God appeared on earth in the body, he was raised

20 L I F E T O G E T H E R

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 fellowship of God’s spiritual­
physical creatures. The believer therefore lauds the Creator,
the Redeemer, God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the
bodily presc:,nce of a brother. The prisoner, the sick person,
the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow
Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the
triune God. Visitor and visited in loneliness recognize in
each other the Christ who is present in the body; they re­
ceive and meet each other as one meets the Lord, in
reverence, humility, and joy. They receive each other’s
benedictions as the benediction of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But if there is so much blessing and joy even in a single
encounter of brother with brother, how inexhaustible are
the riches that open up for those who by God’s will are
privileged to live in the daily fellowship of life with other
Christians !

It is true, of course, that what is an unspeakable gift of
God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and
trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day.
It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian breth­
ren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that
any day may be taken from us, that the time that still
separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed.
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.

C O MM U N I T Y �1

The measure with which God bestows the gift of visible
community is varied. The Christian in exile is comforted by
a brief visit of a Christian brother, a prayer together and a
brother’s blessing; indeed, he is strengthened by a letter writ­
ten by the hand of a Christian. The greetings in the letters
written with Paul’s own hand were doubtless tokens of such
community. Others are given the gift of common worship
on Sundays. Still others have the privilege of living a Chris­
tian life in the fellowship of their families. Seminarians
before their ordination receive the gift of common life with
their brethren for a definite period. Among earnest Chris­
tians in the Church today there is a growing desire to meet
together with other Christians in the rest periods of their
work for common life under the Word. Communal life is
again being recognized by Christians today as the grace that
it is, as the extraordinary, the “roses and lilies” of the Chris­
tian life.

Through and m Jes’I.UJ Christ

Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and
in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less
than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the
daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this.
We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.

What does this mean? It means, first, that a Christian
needs others because of jesus Christ. It means, second, that
a Christian comes to others only through jesus Christ. It
means, third, that in Jesus Christ we have been chosen from
eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.

First, the Christian is the man who no longer seeks his
salvation, his deliverance, his justification in himself, but in

L I F E T O G E T H E R

Jesus Christ alone. He knows that God’s Word in Jesus
Christ pronounces him guilty, even when he does not feel
his guilt, and God’s Word in jesus Christ pronounces him
not guilty and righteous, even when he does not feel that he
is righteous at all. The Christian no longer lives of himself,
by his own claims and his own justification, but by God’s
claims and God’s justification. He lives wholly by God’s
Word pronounced upon him, whether that Word declares
him guilty or innocent.

The death and the life of the Christian is not determined
by his own resources; rather he finds both only in the Word
that comes to him from the outside, in God’s Word to him.
The Reformers expressed it this way: Our righteousness is
an “alien righteousness,” a righteousness that comes from
outside of us (extra nos). They were saying that the Chris­
tian is dependent on the \Vord of God spoken to him. He is
pointed outward, to the Word that comes to him. The
Christian lives wholly by the truth of God’s Word in Jesus
Christ. If somebody asks him, Where is your salvation, your
righteousness? he can never point to himself. He points to
the Word of God in Jesus Christ, which assures him salva­
tion and righteousness. He is as alert as possible to this
Word. Because he daily hungers and thirsts for righteous­
ness, he daily desires the redeeming Word. And it can come
only from the outside. In himself he is destitute and dead.
Help must come from the outside, and it has come and
comes daily and anew in the \Vord of jesus Christ, bringing
redemption, righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.

But God has put this Word into the mouth of men in
order that it may be communicated to other men. When
one person is struck by the Word, he speaks it to others.

C O MM U N I T Y

God has willed that we should seek and find His living
Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man.
Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks
God’s Word to him. He needs him again and again when
he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he
cannot help himself without belying the truth. He needs his
brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word
of salvation. He needs his brother solely because of Jesus
Christ. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the
Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain,
his brother’s is sure.

And that also clarifies the goal of all Christian community:
they meet one another as bringers of the message of salva­
tion. As such, God permits them to meet together and gives
them community. Their fellowship is founded solely upon
Jesus Christ and this “alien righteousness.” All we can
say, therefore, is: the community of Christians springs solely
from the Biblical and Reformation message of the justifica­
tion of man through grace alone; this alone is the basis of
the longing of Christians for one another.

Second, a Christian comes to others only through Jesus
Christ. Among men there is strife. “He is our peace,” says
Paul of Jesus Christ (Eph. 2: 14) . Without Christ there is
discord between God and man and between man and man.
Christ became the Mediator and made peace with God and
among men. Without Christ we should not know God, we
could not call upon Him, nor come to Him. But without
Christ we also would not know our brother, nor could we
come to him. The way is blocked by our own ego. Christ
opened up the way to God and to our brother. Now Chris­
tians can live with one another in peace; they can love and

L I F E T O G E T H E R

serve one another; they can become one. But they can con­
tinue to do so only by way of Jesus Christ. Only in Jesus
Christ are we one, only through him arc \.Vc bound together.
To eternity he remains the one Mediator.

Third, when God’s Son took on flesh, he truly and
bodily took on, out of pure grace, our being, our nature,
ourselves. This was the eternal counsel of the triune God.
Now we are in him. Where he is, there we are too, in the
incarnation, on the Cross, and in his resurrection. We belong
to him because we are in him. That is why the Scriptures
call us the Body of Christ. But if, before we could know
and wish it, we have been chosen and accepted with the
whole Church in Jesus Christ, then we also belong to him in
eternity with one another. We who live here in fellowship
with him will one day be with him in eternal fellowship. He
who looks upon his brother should know that he will be
eternally united with him in Jesus Christ. Christian com­
munity means community through and in Jesus Christ. On
this presupposition rests everything that the Scriptures pro­
vide in the way of directions and precepts for the communal
life of Christians.

“But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write
unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one
another . . . . but we beseech you, brethren, that ye in­
crease more and more” (I Thess. 4:9, 10). God Himself bas
undertaken to teach brotherly love; all that men can add to
it is to remember this divine instruction and the admonition
to excel in it more and more. When God was merciful,
when He revealed Jesus Christ to us as our Brother, when
He won our hearts by His love, this was the beginning of
our instruction in divine love. \Vhen God was merciful to

C O MMU N I T Y 15

us, we learned to be merciful with our brethren. When we
received forgiveness instead of judgment, we, too, were
made ready to forgive our brethren. What God did to us,
we then owed to others. The more we received, the more
we were able to give; and the more meager our brotherly
love, the less were we living by God’s mercy and love.
Thus God Himself taught us to meet one another as God
has met us in Christ. “Wherefore receive ye one another, as
Christ also received us to the glory of God” (Rom. 1 5 : 7 ) .

I n this wise does one, whom God has placed in common
life with other Christians, learn what it means to have
brothers. “Brethren in the Lord,” Paul calls his congregation
(Phil. 1 : 14) . One is a brother to another only through Jesus
Christ. I am a brother to another person through what
Jesus Christ did for me and to me; the other person has be­
come a brother to me through what Jesus Christ did for
him. This fact that we are brethren only through Jesus
Christ is of immeasurable significance. Not only the other
person who is earnest and devout, who comes to me seeking
brotherhood, must I deal with in fellowship. My brother is
rather that other person who has been redeemed by Christ,
delivered from his sin, and called to faith and eternal life.
Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spiriruality
and piety, constirutes the basis of our community. What
determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of
Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in
what Christ has done to both of us. This is true not merely
at the beginning, as though in the course of time something
else were to be added to our community ; it remains so
for all the furure and to all eternity. I have community with
others and I shall continue to have it only through Jesus

26

L I F E T O G E T H E R

Christ. 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. We
have one another only through Christ, but through Christ
we do have one another, wholly, and for all eternity.

That dismisses once and for all every clamorous desire for
something more. One who wants more than what Christ has
established does not want Christian brotherhood. He is look­
ing for some extraordinary social experience which he has
not found elsewhere; he is bringing muddled and impure
desires into Christian brotherhood. Just at this point Chris­
tian brotherhood is threatened most often at the very start
by the greatest danger of all, the danger of being poisoned
at its root, the danger of confusing Christian brotherhood
with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confound­
ing the natural desire of the devout heart for community
with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood. In Chris­
tian brotherhood everything depends upon its being clear
right from the beginning, first, that Christian brotherhood is
not an ideal, but a divine reality. Second, that Christian

brotherhood is a spiritual and not a psychic reality.

Not an I deal but a Divine Reality

Innumerable times a whole Christian community has
broken down .because it had sprung from a wish dream. The
serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian
community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea
of what Christian life together should be and to try to
realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams.
Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of

C O MMU N I T Y

genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be over­
whelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Chris­
tians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

By sheer grace, God will not pennit us to live even for a
brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to
those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over
us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the
God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such dis­
illusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins
to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in
faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock
of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a com­
munity the better for both. A community which cannot
bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon
keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently
loses in that moment the promise of Christian community.
Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream
that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance
to genuine community and must be banished if genuine
community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a com­
munity more than the Christian community itself becomes
a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions
may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer
proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary
ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by
others, and by himself. He enters the community of Chris­
tians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the
brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant,
a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He

28 L I F E T O G E T H E R

acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if
his dream binds men together. When things do not go his
way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is
destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he
becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accu:;er of
God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

Because God has already laid the only foundation of our
fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body
with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered
into common life with them, we enter into that common
life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank
God for what He has done for us. 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? Is the divine gift of Christian fel­
lowship anything less than this, any day, even the most
difficult and distressing day? Even when sin and misunder­
standing 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? Thus the very hour of dis­
illusionment with my brother becomes incomparably sal­
utary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of
us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by
that one Word and Deed which really binds us together­
the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning

C O MM U N I T Y

mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Chris­
tian fellowship.

In the Christian community thankfulness is just what it is
anywhere else in the Christian life. Only he who gives
thanks for little things receives the big things. We prevent
God from giving us the great spiritual gifts He has in store
for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts. We
think we dare not be satisfied with the small measure of
spiritual knowledge, experience, and love that has been
given to us, and that we must constantly be looking forward
eagerly for the highest good. Then we deplore the fact that
we lack the deep certainty, the strong faith, and the rich
experience that God has given to others, and we consider
this lament to be pious. We pray for the big things and for­
get to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really
not small) gifts. How can God entrust great things to one
who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things?
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 com­
plaining 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.

This applies in a special way to the complaints often
heard from pastors and zealous members about their con­
gregations. A pastor should not complain about his congre­
gation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God.
A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that
he should become its accuser before God and men. When a

so L I F E T O G E T H E R

person becomes alienated from a Christian community in
which he has been placed and begins to raise complaints
about it, he had better examine himself first to see whether
the trouble is not due to his wish dream that should be
shattered by God; and if this be the case, let him thank God
for leading him into this predicament. But if not, let him
nevertheless guard against ever becoming an accuser of the
congregation before God. Let him rather accuse himself for
his unbelief. Let him pray God for an understanding of his
own failure and his particular sin, and pray that he may
not wrong his brethren. Let him, in the consciousness of his
own guilt, make intercession for his brethren. Let him do
what he is committed to do, and thank God.

Christian community is like the Christian’s sanctification.
It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows
the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What
may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and
glorious to God. } ust as the Christian should not be con­
stantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian com­
munity has not been given to us by God for us to be
constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we
daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and
steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day
as God pleases.

Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must
realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in
which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to
recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all
our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely
shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.

C OMMU N I T Y 81

A Spiritual not a Human Reality

Because Christian community is founded solely on Jesus
Christ, it is a spiritual and not a psychic reality. In this it
differs absolutely from all other communities. The Scrip­
tures call “pneumatic,” “spiritual,” that which is created
only by the Holy Spirit, who puts Jesus Christ into our
hearts as Lord and Saviour. The Scriptures term “psychic,”
“human” 1 that which comes from the natural urges, powers,
and capacities of the human spirit.

The basis of all spiritual reality is the clear, manifest
Word of God in Jesus Christ. The basis of all human reality
is the dark, turbid urges and desires of the human mind. The
basis of the community of the Spirit is truth; the basis of
human community of spirit is desire. The essence of the
community of the Spirit is light, for “God is light, and in
him is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5) and “if we walk in
the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with
another” ( 1: 7). The essence of human community of spirit
is darkness, “for from within, out of the hean of men, pro­
ceed evil thoughts” (Mark 7:21). It is the deep night that
hovers over the sources of all human action, even over all
noble and devout impulses. The community of the Spirit is
the fellowship of those who are called by Christ; human
community of spirit is the fellowship of devout souls. In the
community of the Spirit there burns the bright love of
brotherly service, agape; in human community of spirit

1 For the sake of clarity, liberty has been taken in the following
pages to render the term “geistlich” as “spiritual,” referring to the
Holy Spirit, and the term “seelisch” as “human,” rather than employ
the tenns “pneumatic” and “psychic,” which are precise but perhaps
alien to our eus.-Tr.

S2 L I F E T O G E T H E R

there glows the dark love of good and evil desire, eros. In
the former there is ordered, brotherly service, in the latter
disordered desire for pleasure; in the former humble sub­
jection to the brethren, in the latter humble yet haughty
subjection of a brother to one’s own desire. In the com­
munity of the Spirit the Word of God alone rules; in
human community of spirit there rules, along with the
Word, the man who is furnished with exceptional powers,
experience, and magical, suggestive capacities. There God’s
Word alone is binding; here, besides the Word, men bind
others to themselves. There all power, honor, and domin­
ion are surrendered to the Holy Spirit; here spheres of
power and influence of a personal nature are sought and
cultivated. It is true, in so far as these are devout men, that
they do this with the intention of serving the highest and
the best, but in actuality the result is to dethrone the Holy
Spirit, to n !egate Him to remote unreality. In actuality,
it is only the human that is operative here. In the spiritual
realm the Spirit governs; in human community, psycho­
logical techniques and methods. In the former naive, un­
psychological, unmethodical, helping love is extended
toward one’s brother; in the latter psychological analysis
and construction; in the one the service of one’s brother is
simple and humble; in the other service consists of a search­
ing, calculating analysis of a stranger.

Perhaps the contrast between spiritual and human reality
can be made most clear in the following observation: Within
the spiritual community there is never, nor in any way, any
“immediate” relationship of one to another, whereas human
community expresses a profound, elemental, human desire
for community, for immediate contact with other human

C O MM U N I T Y ss

souls, just as in the flesh there is the urge for physical
merger with other flesh. Such desire of the human soul seeks
a complete fusion of I and Thou, whether this occur in the
union of love or, what is after all the same thing, in the
forcing of another person into one’s sphere of power and
influence. Here is where the humanly strong person is in his
element, securing for himself the admiration, the love, or
the fear of the weak. Here human ties, suggestions, and
bonds are everything, and in the immediate community of
souls we have reflected the distorted image of everything
that is originally and solely peculiar to community mediated
through Christ.

Thus there is such a thing as human absorption. It ap­
pears in all the forms of conversion wherever the superior
power of one person is consciously or unconsciously mis­
used to influence profoundly and draw into his spell an­
other individual or a whole community. Here one soul
operates directly upon another soul. The weak have been
overcome by the strong, the resistance of the weak has
broken down under the influence of another person. He has
been overpowered, but not won over by the thing itself.
This becomes evident as soon as the demand is made that he
throw himself into the cause itself, independently of the
person to whom he is bound, or possibly in opposition to
this person. Here is where the humanly converted person
breaks down and thus makes it evident that his conversion
was effected, not by the Holy Spirit, but by a man, and
therefore has no stability.

Likewise, there is a human love of one’s neighbor. Such
passion is capable of prodigious sacrifices. Often it far sur­
passes genuine Christian love in fervent devotion and visible

L I F E T O G E T H E R

results. It speaks the Christian language with overwhelming
and stirring eloquence. But it is what Paul is speaking of
when he says: “And though I bestow all my goods to feed
the poor, and though I give my body to be burned”-in
other words, though I combine the utmost deeds of love
with the utmost of devotion-“and have not charity [that
is, the love of Christ), it profiteth me nothing” ( I Cor.
IJ: 3 ) . Human love is directed to the other person for his
own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ’s sake. There­
fore, human love seeks direct contact with the other person;
it loves him not as a free person but as one whom it binds
to itself. It wants to gain, to capture by every means; it uses
force. It desires to be irresistible, to rule.

Human love has little regard for truth. It makes the truth
relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come be­
tween it and the beloved person. Human love desires the
other person, his company, his answering love, but it does
not serve him. On the contrary, it continues to desire even
when it seems to be serving. There are two marks, both of
which are one and the same thing, that manifest the differ­
ence between spiritual and human love: Human love cannot
tolerate the dissolution of a fellowship that has become false
for the sake of genuine fellowship, and human love cannot
love an enemy, that is, one who seriously and stubbornly
resists it. Both spring from the same source: human love is
by its very nature desire-desire for human community. So
long as it can satisfy this desire in some way, it will not give
it up, even for the sake of truth, even for the sake of
genuine love for others. But where it can no longer expect
its desire to be fulfilled, there it stops short-namely, in the
face of an enemy. There it turns into hatred, contempt, and
calumny.

C O MM U N I T Y 85

Right here is the point where spiritual love begins. This
is why human love becomes personal hatred when it en­
counters genuine spiritual love, which does not desire but
serves. Human love makes itself an end in itself. It creates of
itself an end, an idol which it worships, to which it must
subject everything. It nurses and cultivates an ideal, it loves
itself, and nothing else in the world. Spiritual love, however,
comes from Jesus Christ, it serves him alone; it knows that
it has no immediate access to other persons.

Jesus Christ stands between the lover and the others he
loves. I do not know in advance what love of others means
on the basis of the general idea of love that grows out of
my human desires-all this may rather be hatred and an
insidious kind of selfishness in the eyes of Christ. What love
is, only Christ tells in his Word. Contrary to all my own
opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love
toward the brethren really is. Therefore, spiritual love is
bound solely to the Word of Jesus Christ. Where Christ
bids me to maintain fellowship for the sake of love, I will
maintain it. Where his truth enjoins me to dissolve a fellow­
ship for love’s sake, there I will dissolve it, despite all the
protests of my human love. Because spiritual love does not
desire but rather serves, it loves an enemy as a brother. It
originates neither in the brother nor in the enemy but in
Christ and his Word. Human love can never understand
spiritual love, for spiritual love is from above; it is some­
thing completely strange, new, and incomprehensible to all
earthly love.

Because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not
desire direct fellowship with them. As only Christ can
speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others,
too, can be saved only by Christ himself. This means that I

86 LIF E T O G E T H E R

must release the other person from every attempt of mine
to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. The
other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be
loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man,
died, and rose again, for whom Christ bought forgiveness of
sins and eternal life. Because Christ has long since acted
decisively for my brother, before I could begin to act, I
must leave him his freedom to be Christ’s; I must meet him
only as the person that he already is in Christ’s eyes. This is
the meaning of the proposition that we can meet others
only through the mediation of Christ. Human love con­
structs its own image of the other person, of what he is and
what he should become. It takes the life of the other person
into its own hands. Spiritual love recognizes the true image
of the other person which he has received from Jesus Christ;
the image that Jesus Christ himself embodied and would
stamp upon all men.

Therefore, spiritual love proves itself in that everything
it says and does commends Christ. It will not seek to move
others by all too personal, direct influence, by impure inter­
ference in the life of another. It will not take pleasure in
pious, human fervor and excitement. It will rather meet the
other person with the clear Word of God and be ready to
leave him alone with this Word for a long time, willing to
release him again in order that Christ may deal with him.
It will respect the line that has been drawn between him and
us by Christ, and it will find full fellowship with him in the
Christ who alone binds us together. Thus this spiritual love
will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother
about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is
always through prayer to Christ and that love of others is

C O MM U N I T Y 37

wholly dependent upon the truth in Christ. It is out of this
love that John the disciple speaks. “I have no greater joy
than to hear that my children walk in truth” (III John 4) .

Human love lives by uncontrolled and uncontrollable
dark desires; spiritual love lives in the clear light of service
ordered by the truth. Human love produces human subjec­
tion, dependence, constraint; spiritual love creates freedom

of the brethren under the Word. Human love breeds hot­
house flowers; spiritual love creates the fruits that grow
healthily in accord with God’s good will in the rain and
storm and sunshine of God’s o•1tdoors. The existence of any
Christian life together depends on whether it succeeds at
the right time in bringing out the ability to distinguish be­
tween a human ideal and God’s reality, between spiritual
and human community.

The life or death of a Christian community is determined
by whether it achieves sober wisdom on this point as soon
as possible. In other words, life together under the Word
will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form
itself into a movement, an order, a society, a collegium

pietatis, but rather where it understands itself as being a
part of the one, holy, catholic, Christian Church, where it
shares actively and passively in the sufferings and struggles
and· promise of the whole Church. Every principle of selec­
tion and every separation connected with it that is not
necessitated quite objectively by common work, local con­
ditions, or family connections is of the greatest danger to a
Christian community. When the way of intellectual or
spiritual selection is taken the human element always in­
sinuates itself and robs the fellowship of its spiritual power
and effectiveness for the Church, drives it into sectarianism.

88 L I F E T O G E T H E R

The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly
useless people, from a Christian community may actually
mean the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is
knocking at the door. \Ve must, therefore, be very careful
at this point.

The undiscerning observer may think that this mixture of
ideal and reality, of the human and the spiritual, is most
likely to be present where there are a number of levels in
the structure of a community, as in marriage, the family,
friendship, where the human element as such already as­
sumes a central importance in the community’s coming
into being at all, and where the spiritual is only something
added to the physical and intellectual. According to this
view, it is only in these relationships that there is a danger
of confusing and mixing the two spheres, whereas there can
be no such danger in a purely spiritual fellowship. This idea,
however, is a great delusion. According to all experience the
truth is just the opposite. A marriage, a family, a friendship
is quite conscious of the limitations of its community-build­
ing power; such relationships know very well, if they are
sound, where the human element stops and the spiritual be­
gins. They know the difference between physical-intellec­
tual and spiritual community. On the contrary, when a
community of a purely spiritual kind is established, it
always encounters the danger that everything human will
be carried into and intermixed with this fellowship. A
purely spiritual relationship is not only dangerous but also
an altogether abnormal thing. When physical and family
relationships or ordinary associations, that is, those arising
from everyday life with all its claims upon people who are
working together, are not projected into the spiritual com-

C O MMU N I T Y 89

munity, then we must be especially careful. That is why,
as experience has shown, it is precisely in retreats of short
duration that the human element develops most easily.
Nothing is easier than to stimulate the glow of fellowship
in a few days of life together, but nothing is more fatal to
the sound, sober brotherly fellowship of everyday life.

There is probably no Christian to whom God has not
given the uplifting experience of genuine Christian com­
munity at least once in his life. But in this world such experi­
ences can be no more than a gracious extra beyond the
daily bread of Christian community life. We have no claim
upon such experiences, and we do not live with other Chris­
tians for the sake of acquiring them. It is not the experience
of Christian brotherhood, but solid and certain faith in
brotherhood that holds us together. That God has acted
and wants to act upon us all, this we see in faith as God’s
greatest gift, this makes us glad and happy, but it also makes
us ready to forego all such experiences when God at times
does not grant them. We are bound together by faith, not
by experience.

“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to
dwell together in unity”-this is the Scripture’s praise of life
together under the Word. But now we can rightly interpret
the words “in unity” and say, “for brethren to dwell to­
gether through Christ.” For Jesus Christ alone is our unity.
‘1He is our peace.” Through him alone do we have access to
one another, joy in one another, and fellowship with one an­
other.

• Covers
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Community
• 2. The Day with Others
• 3. The Day Alone
• 4. Ministry
• 5. Confession and Communion