The following is a rather long quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book Life Together. There is so much to say here about what constitutes true Christian brotherhood and community, but I am going to let his words speak the powerful truth for themselves.
The takeaway for me is that in the midst of all of my yearning and learning with regard to authentic community, I need to constantly be mindful that there is a Man in the middle of it all, without whom it would not be possible -- Jesus Christ!
Enjoy...
I need to see my brother or sister always as being together with Christ. I should not see them as separate from him and therefore a target for control.
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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 Christians can live with one another in peace; they can love and serve one another; they can become one...Only in Jesus Christ are we one, only through him are we bound together. To eternity he remains the one Mediator.
and
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 become 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.
and
Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes 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 future and to all eternity.
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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.
therefore
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 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 Christian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, confounding the natural desire of the devout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood.
finally
In Christian 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.
Teacher, speaker, entrepreneur and follower of Christ; with a passion to be a catalyst for authentic community.