Bonhoeffer Bonus 2 ~ True Community Only Through Justification
hmmm. hmmm. another Bon-Bon with the community flavor.
If you missed it, you can read the first Bon-Bon here. Without further delay, let’s make a bee-line to the nectar: 
"Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this… It means that in Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.
The Christian is the man who no longer seeks his salvation, his deliverance, his justification in himself but in Jesus Christ alone…He lives wholly by God’s Word pronounced upon him, whether that Word declares him guilty or innocent…
The Reformers expressed it this way: Our righteousness is an "alien righteousness," a righteousness that comes from outside of us. They were saying that the Christian is dependent on the Word of God spoken to him…
Help must come from the outside, and it has come and comes daily and anew in the Word of Jesus Christ…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. God has willed that we should seek and find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man…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…
And that also clarifies the goal of all Christian community: they meet one another as bringers of the message of salvation. 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 justification of man through grace alone; this alone is the basis of the longing of Christians for one another.1
- Excerpts from Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community. Harper & Row Publishers Inc., 1954. pages 21-23
[all bold emphases are added by Vision Glorious] [back]
