“Then, along with the other’s
freedom comes the abuse of that freedom in sin,
which becomes a burden for Christians in their relationship to one another.” Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Fortress
Press, 2015 (Reader’s Edition), page 79.
During our exploration of Life Together I have remarked, from time
to time, that it would be nice to be able to talk to Bonhoeffer about what he
meant when he wrote this thing or that thing, about what he envisioned for the
Body of Christ when he described facets of life together, about how his own
experience informed his thinking and writing. I find the next three paragraphs
of Life Together to be especially the
case. I’ve been pondering these paragraphs for a while before writing about
them and even now am reluctant to do so because: I have questions for
Bonhoeffer about his meaning and how he saw sin and forgiveness in the church
in practical daily life; and I cannot possibly share my own thoughts about the
matter comprehensively through the medium of a blog – to do so would change the
character of this series on Life Together.
As it stands, these paragraphs leave many unanswered questions in terms of what
Bonhoeffer thought sin and forgiveness should look like in the life of the
church – someone who knows Bonhoeffer’s writings better than I do (his sermons
and letters and lectures) will likely have a better understanding.
I think that life together
needs to be worked out in life together, and as I interact with these three
paragraphs I am deeply mindful of this. What I mean is that the relationships of
the Body of Christ are dynamic and organic, they are full of life and are
animated by the Holy Spirit. I am not aware of any static Biblical language
regarding the Church of Jesus Christ. Consider that we are “growing into a holy
temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:21); that we are “joined and knit together by
what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every
part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in
love” (Ephesians 4:19).
The Body of Christ is
incarnational, it is human and Divine, frail and mighty, sometimes it sees
clearly, sometimes dimly – at all times the members of the Body desperately
need the grace, and mercy, and life of the Head of the Body, our Lord Jesus. We
are different than the first Adam, who became a living soul; the last Adam became
a life-giving spirit and it is He who lives within us; the first Man was made
of dust, the second Man is the Lord from heaven – our identity is not in the first
Man but in the second Man (see 1 Corinthians 15:45 – 49). We are learning to
bear the image of the heavenly Man (2 Corinthians 3:17 – 18).
This is important for a
Biblical understanding of sin and forgiveness within the Body of Christ, and it
is important in terms of what our expectations should be. If our core identity as
Christians remains that of sinners – then we ought to expect sin and sin and
more sin, for sinners sin as a way of life. On the other hand, if our core
identity in Jesus Christ is saints, which is the term the New Testament uses
for Christians more than any other term,
then we ought to anticipate obedience to Christ as we love Him and others, and
as we affirm one another in Jesus Christ. This is not an exercise in positive
thinking, it is an exercise of belief in the Word of God, about what God says
about the work of Jesus Christ and the reality of that work in us, about His
empowering presence within us – as individuals but also, I think, more
importantly as His People.
Bonhoeffer writes (page 79), “The
sins of the other are even harder to bear than is their freedom…”
The first hurdle we have with
the first paragraph are the words “sin” and “sins”. Much of the professing
church lives as if it does not think there is such a thing as sin, or it uses
the term in the sense of “imperfection” or “mistake”. Sin has been reduced to psychology
and therapy, it doesn’t require obedient
repentance (the only Biblical repentance). Then there are other Christians
who trivialize sin by focusing on cultural norms within their church traditions
and elevating those norms to Biblical commandments.
Jesus Christ died on the Cross
and experienced the wrath and judgment of God bearing our sins and our sin nature
to bring us back to God so that we might live in intimacy with Him and with one
another. Sin in all of its forms is hideous, dark, and deadly. When we make sin
a matter of psychology or a matter of cultural norm we lessen our perception of
its hideousness and we justify ourselves and our truly sinful actions and
thinking. When we repent of deviating from religious cultural norms we need not
repent of Biblical sins – which are indeed true sin – death-dealing sin.
We are at the place, in much
of the professing church, where it is deemed culturally sinful to speak of
Biblical sin. When we do this we preclude the follower of Christ from seeking
true forgiveness for true sin lest someone be offended. It is as if a person
with cancer is prohibited from calling the disease cancer and seeking cancer treatment
because the “C” word is unpleasant – he or she may have a allergy pill but not
surgery, chemo, or radiation because those treatments are unpleasant and
painful. Therefore we have people desperately seeking the closure and redemption
and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ in Biblical obedient repentance, but who are
precluded from doing so because we will not acknowledge the reality sin. We
have hospitals that no longer have treatment rooms or surgeries – we only
dispense medications to relieve pain and perform palliative care. Our pastors
and teachers are often more like hospice workers than Biblical servants – the difference
being that congregations and their leaders deny Biblical sin while hospice workers
and their patients know that death is approaching.
Much of the professing church
does not know what repentance is, it thinks it is confessing sin but it is much
more than that – it means turning around and following Jesus Christ in obedience, this is why I’m styling this
as obedient repentance, it is more
than confession of sin, more than “I’m sorry” – it is following Jesus.
Perhaps every church ought to
ask itself, “Do we believe in Biblical sin? Do we understand the Biblical view
of sin? Are we living with an awareness of what true Biblical sin is?”
If I
think pancreatic cancer is simple indigestion I will regret it.
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