43 pages • 1-hour read
Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community
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Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Community”
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of religious discrimination.
Bonhoeffer explains to his readers that it is only through the grace of God that Christians can gather with one another and that even Jesus lived among his enemies and faced isolation: “At the end, all his disciples deserted him” (17). Therefore, Christians should express immense gratitude to God for the ability to gather.
Bonhoeffer acknowledges that craving fellowship with other Christians is a normal response, as humans were created for community. He writes, “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” (19). The fulfillment of this natural need is a gift from God, and for a Christian in exile or prison, even a brief visit should be counted as a blessing.
Bonhoeffer explains that he talks about community being a gift not to frighten readers but to remind them of God’s goodness. He writes, “Communal life is again being recognized by Christians today as the grace it is” (21). This grace, he tells readers, is something that Christians should find beautiful and hopeful, a reminder of God’s love for his people.
In “Through and In Jesus Christ” (21), Bonhoeffer explains that the gift of Christian community is a way to bring glory to Jesus Christ and draw people’s focus away from themselves as individuals. Bonhoeffer writes, “If somebody asks [a Christian], Where is your salvation, your righteousness? he can never point to himself. He points to the Word of God in Jesus Christ” (22). However, God has given people the Scriptures to share with others, and Bonhoeffer explains that Christians need to hear the Word of God from other Christians throughout their lives, especially in times of trouble or sorrow. Telling others the message of salvation is, according to Bonhoeffer, the ultimate goal of Christian community.
Bonhoeffer also argues that experiencing God’s grace teaches Christians how to treat one another with grace as well. He encourages readers to see their fellow Christians as their family in Christ and warns against having a too-rigid understanding of what an ideal Christian community should look like.
In “Not an Ideal but a Divine Reality” (26), Bonhoeffer describes the slippery slope that can happen when Christians approach community with an idealized version of it in mind. Such people enter communion “with [their] demands, set up [their] own law, and judge[] the brethren and God himself accordingly […] When things do not go [their] way, [they] call[] the effort a failure” (27-28). This can lead to unnecessary conflict (with their fellow Christians, with God, and with themselves) and worry.
Relatedly, Christians must avoid judging their fellow Christians, for God alone knows the states of each person’s heart. Christians should be grateful for even the smallest of blessings and should not judge the strength or weakness of a community based on its great accomplishments, or lack thereof. The sooner the Christian can recognize the reality of a God-given community, the better.
In “A Spiritual Not a Human Reality” (31), Bonhoeffer considers what sets a spiritual community built upon faith in Jesus Christ apart from other human communities. The health of a Christian community relies on healthy individual relationships between members. He argues that just as humans can at times project an ideal onto their loved ones, they can project an ideal onto a community. Bonhoeffer writes that this stems from the human tendency to use even love in an attempt to “conquer,” denying the beloved their independence.
He then urges readers not to discount members of the spiritual community who may appear weak to them, for God may have a greater purpose in mind for such people, and only God can judge humans in the first place. Instead, Christians should remember how God sees them and seek to do the same. Bonhoeffer reminds his readers, “We are bound together by faith, not by experience” (39). One incredible part of Christian community is the fact that it can unite people who may otherwise never have met.
Chapter 1 Analysis
Though this chapter introduces the work’s main theme of The Nature and Importance of Christian Fellowship and Unity, it begins, paradoxically, with an image of isolation: Bonhoeffer reminds readers that even Jesus was abandoned. This is, in part, an important tonal reminder of the circumstances in which Bonhoeffer wrote the work: driven underground and not allowed to preach or print his words. For readers who might likewise be struggling with feeling alone in their faith, Bonhoeffer’s words serve to normalize their circumstances and provide hope: The fact that Christ also suffered and was abandoned is a reminder of God’s familiarity with human suffering.
The biblical allusion also supports Bonhoeffer’s contention that community is a gift rather than a guarantee. The sanctity of Christian community becomes all the more obvious, Bonhoeffer suggests, when one has been deprived of it: “Visitor and the visited in loneliness recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body; they receive and meet each other as one meets the Lord, in reverence, humility, and joy” (20). For those used to meeting regularly with fellow Christians, however, the tendency is to become complacent—to forget that community is a blessing.
This idea of complacency goes hand-in-hand with Bonhoeffer’s other key point regarding community in this chapter: that if a Christian brings their own idealized vision of community to fellowship with other Christians, they are setting themselves up for disappointment in themselves, others, and God. Since attitudes toward the community are likely informed by attitudes toward the individuals within it, Bonhoeffer ties this to the biblical injunction against judging one’s fellow humans, writing, “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” (30). This is one of several places throughout the book where Bonhoeffer seeks to humble his readers: Each member of the community has a purpose, sometimes one that only God can see and reveal.
Indeed, Bonhoeffer implies that part of the function of gathering with other Christians is the opportunity it presents to practice viewing others as God sees them: “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” (36). Community thus becomes a place to exercise humility—a way of putting one’s faith into practice that is in line with the work’s broader emphasis on The Role of Worship and Scripture in Daily Life and The Relationship Between Humility, Confession, and Forgiveness.
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