Reflections on Bonhoeffer’s Life Together – 101

“Other Christians stand before us as the sign of God’s truth and grace. They have been given to us to help us. Another Christian hears our confession of sin in Christ’s place, forgives our sins in Christ’s name. Another Christian keeps the secret of our confession as God’s keeps it. When I go to another believer to confess, I am going to God.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Fortress Press, 2015 (Reader’s Edition), page 88. [Italics mine].

If you are reading this without its context you will miss its richness. What went before it is important, and what comes after it speaks to “a breakthrough to community” – (page 89). Many Christians reading Bonhoeffer’s words will fight them, stumble over them, run from them, and refuse to engage them thoughtfully. Others will see nothing but “risk” in them; risk of betrayal, risk of the strong dominating the weak, risk of manipulation, risk of dissension, risk of hurt, risk of pain, risk of losing authority, risk of misunderstanding.

Let me frankly say that there is the risk of losing all in the pursuit of God and of life together; and I suppose I should say that if we are not willing to lose all that we’d better stay home in the confines of our enclosed souls. Jesus tells us that if we are to follow Him that we must take up our cross and deny ourselves and that if we seek to save our lives that we will lose them, but that if we lose them for His sake and the Gospel’s that we will save them (Mark 8:34 – 38). Paul wrote that he considered everything worth losing for the sake of knowing Jesus – he counted all that he had lost dung (Phil. 3:7 – 11). Those that “play it safe” will lose, those that “risk it all” will find safety in Christ.

We tend to guard the status quo and engage in risk management rather than pursuing God and the Gospel. There will be pain in the pursuit of God in Christ and in life together, but there is also pain in continuing to live within enclosed souls with calloused walls of protection.

We face the temptation of one minute insisting that all Scripture is inspired by God and yet functionally, if not doctrinally, explaining away a verse here or a passage there. Bonhoeffer reads John 20:21 – 23 and he believes it to the point that he trusts it and writes about it and seeks to practice it. Jesus sends us as the Father sent Him, He says “Receive the Holy Spirit,” and He says, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any they are retained.”

We can say, “This can’t be, how can this be? Because I don’t understand it I won’t believe it or practice it.” Or we can say, “I don’t understand it but I will seek to practice it in obedience to Christ and in life together with my brothers and sisters.” Who understands the Atonement? We may touch the Atonement as we are touched by the Atonement, but how can we ever understand the Atonement – its height, its depth, its breath, its length?

Again, context in this passage is critical, not only immediate context but the context of the entire book. Consider all that Bonhoeffer has written prior to this passage, and then consider it again. I think I can say that unless we are committed to living under the Word of Christ that Bonhoeffer’s teaching in this passage cannot be practiced – for we cannot trust one another unless we are submitted to the Word of God. If I were teaching Life Together in a group I would say, “Let’s go back to the beginning, to Chapter One, and review how we arrived here. Then let’s review if we are practicing what we learned prior to arriving here.” Only then, I think, can we consider moving forward in practicing this final chapter.

The church, the people of God, ought to be the safest place on earth. If we are the safest place on earth then we ought to be that place where we can confess our sins to one another – brother to brother, sister to sister, parishioner to pastor or elder with appropriate and wise safeguards.

This can be misunderstood in many ways, not the least of which is that our present society is awash with the idea that public disclosure of emotional and psychological pain is to be applauded and encouraged; people are not only encouraged to air their “dirty laundry” in public but they are encouraged to dirty their laundry so they can air it in public. Bonhoeffer is not talking about dirty laundry, he is talking about sin; we confess our sins not to garner attention but to seek forgiveness; a guilty person ought not to expect accolades for committing a crime. Sin is hideous – Christ died for the forgiveness of our sins; we are not considering therapy, we are considering life and death and the Cross of Christ. No sin is trivial – what we may consider a trivial sin is a sin for which Christ died, a sin which separates from God – there is no trivial sin; to trivialize sin is to trivialize the Cross of Christ and the love and mercy of God.

On page 90 Bonhoeffer is clear that he is not talking about confession before the entire congregation but rather between two Christians (we’ll explore this in a future post). Bonhoeffer sees confession as a breakthrough to community (page 89), a breakthrough to the cross (page 90), and a breakthrough to new life (page 91). This is unfamiliar ground for most of us and it is natural that we may be leery of walking on it – we may liken it to a minefield knowing that things can go wrong; we will take out time traversing this ground – Bonhoeffer took time in describing what he saw; we will do our best to understand what he saw, why it was important to him, and whether it has Biblical foundations.

How important is confession to one another for Bonhoeffer? It is the last theme of his book, the last extended vision he is sharing, it is that which leads to the Lord’s Supper where he writes, “Here the community has reached its goal…The life together of Christians under the Word has reached its fulfillment in the sacrament (page 97).”