I have been reading Bonhoeffers book entitled “Communion of Saints”. With all the issues surrounding our life together I wanted to go back and refresh myself as to what one Lutheran author, Pastor and theologian had to say. It seems that we are so willing to write people off, to not forgive and in some cases remove them from the fellowship that sometimes the perspective is warped and we forget why Christ created the church in the first place.
Here’s Bonhoeffer –
Christ died for the church so that its members might lead one life, with one another and for one another. Our being for one another now has to be actualised through the act of love. Three great possibilities for acting positively for one another are disclosed in the communion of saints: renunciatory, active work for our neighbour, prayers of intercession, and lastly the mutual granting of forgiveness of sins in God’s name. With all of them it is a question of abandoning oneself ‘for’ one’s neighbour, for his good, but with the readiness to do and bear everything in his stead, indeed if need be to sacrifice oneself for him, to act vicariously for him. Even if purely vicarious action is seldom actualised, the intention to achieve it is contained in every genuine act of love.
