life together… pt. 2
some excerpts from ch. 1, community…
- 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 … all his disciples deserted him … on the cross he was utterly alone.
- So the Christian, too belongs not tin the seclusion of the cloistered life but in the thick of foes.
- The Kindom 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 devout people. O you blasphemers adn betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared?
>> Luther
- So between the death of Christ and the Last Day it is only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with ohter Christians.
- The believer feels no shame, as though he were still living too much in the flesh, when yhe yearns for the physical presence of other Christians.
- 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!
- Christianity means community through Jesus Christa and in Jesus Christ.
- … a Christian needs others because of Jesus Christ … a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ … that in Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.
- God has willed that we should sseek adn find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man.
- … the goal of all Christian community: they meet one another as bringers of the message of salvation.
- He who looks upon his brother should know that he will be eternally united with him in Jesus Christ.
- Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us.
GOOD
- One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. He is looking 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 Christian 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 Chrsitian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confounding the natural desire of teh dovout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood.