At the member’s meeting last week, we said that while our Life Groups are intended to be much more than Bible study, they will always, in some form, spend time in the Bible together. We believe that is simply how God designed Christian community to function and grow – in the soil of His word, with ongoing application of the water and fertilizer of his word. Dietrich Bonhoeffer explains more in his 1939 classic, Life Together:
“Christians no longer live by their own resources….They live entirely by God’s Word pronounced on them, in faithful submission to God’s judgment, whether it declares them guilty or righteous….Christians are dependent on the Word of God spoken to them….They watch for this Word wherever they can. Because they daily hunger and thirst for righteousness, they long for the redeeming Word again and again. It can only come from the outside. In themselves they are destitute and dead. Help must come from the outside; and it has come and comes daily and anew in the Word of Jesus Christ, bringing us redemption, righteousness, innocence, and blessedness….
Therefore, Christians need other Christians who speak God’s Word to them. They need them again and again when they become uncertain and disheartened because, living by their own resources, they cannot help themselves without cheating themselves out of the truth. They need other Christians as bearers and proclaimers of the divine word of salvation…The heart in one’s heart is uncertain; the Word is sure. At the same time, this also clarifies that the goal of all Christian community is to encounter one another as bringers of the message of salvation. As such, God allows Christians to come together and grants them community.”
Bonhoeffer next draws a contrast between two types of communities Christians could form. One is created by the Spirit of God and is based on Scripture. The other is created by mere emotional attachments and is based on our own wisdom:
“In the spiritual community the Word of God alone rules; in the emotional community the individual who is equipped with exceptional powers, experience, and [seemingly] magical, suggestive abilities rules along with the Word. In the one, God’s Word alone is binding; in the other, besides the Word, human beings bind others to themselves. In the one, all power, honor, and rule are surrendered to the Holy Spirit; in the other, power and personal spheres of influence are sought and cultivated.”
“So far as these are devout people, they certainly seek this power with the intention of serving the highest and the best. But in reality they end up dethroning the Holy Spirit and banishing it to the realm of unreal remoteness; only what is emotional remains real here. Thus, in the spiritual community the Spirit rules; in the emotional community, psychological techniques and methods. In the former, unsophisticated, nonpsychological, unmethodical, helping love is offered to one another; in the latter, psychological analysis and design. In the former, service to one another is simple and humble; in the latter, it is to strangers treated in a searching, calculating fashion.”
This is true because “Only Christ in his Word tells me what love is. Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love for my brothers and sisters really looks like. Therefore, spiritual love is bound to the word of Jesus Christ alone….Therefore, spiritual love will prove successful insofar as it commends the other to Christ in all that it says and does. It will not seek to agitate another by exerting all too personal, direct influence or by crudely interfering in one’s life. It will not take pleasure in pious, emotional fervor and excitement. Rather, it will encounter the other with the clear word of God and be prepared to leave the other alone with this word for a long time.”
Ok, but if we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, why can’t we just intuit what we need for community from Him? Why do we have to be in the Bible? Because the Bible is the Holy Spirit’s favorite tool. He hovers over these words and uses them to form His new creation. Bonhoeffer explains that in community, the reading of “the Holy Scriptures…becomes every day more meaningful and more beneficial. What we call our life, our troubles, and our guilt is by no means the whole of reality; our life, our need, our guilt, and our deliverance are there in the Scriptures. Because it pleased God to act for us there, it is only there that we will be helped. Only in the Holy Scriptures do we get to know our own story. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the God and Father of Jesus Christ and our God. We must once again get to know the Scriptures as the reformers and our forebears knew them. We must not shy away from the work and the time required for this task….those who are not willing to learn how to deal with the Scriptures for themselves are not Protestant Christians.
Perhaps we should ask a further question: How are we supposed to rightly help other Christians who are experiencing troubles and temptation if not with God’s own Word? All our own words quickly fail. However, those who ‘like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old’ (Matt. 13:52)—who can speak out of the abundance of God’s Word the wealth of instructions, admonitions, and comforting words from the Scriptures—will be able to drive out demons and help one another through God’s Word.”
This, then, is our vision for community at CTK:
– Not merely a community bound together by a sense of belonging or mutual well-intentions.
– Not merely a community based on a dry and intellectual grasp of the Bible.
– Not a community built on mere emotional fervor or dynamic personalities.
– But rather, a miraculous community birthed and nurtured by the Holy Spirit through the word of Christ, as we submit to it, learn it, meditate on it, and bring it to bear on our lives more and more, again and again…together.