Lesson One – The Ecclesia
The Cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call is to abandon the attachments to the world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we depart on discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death – we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise godfearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
This is true for all who follow Christ, because it was true for him.
(The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pgs 89 & 91)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a modern-day martyr. His life came to an end by special order of Heinrich Himmler, one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of the holocaust. Bonhoeffer and Watchman Nee share lives of suffering for their faith; both understood Christ’s call for a joint session at the cross; they partook voluntarily in that suffering; Bonhoeffer to offer the ultimate sacrifice – his life.
We will now take a detour from the subject of the death of the old man in the individual and consider the consequences of that old man being alive and well in the believer, and how it has affected the body of Christ. A reality that Bonhoeffer knew all too well, and that is why the subject of this detour revolves around his work.
Let’s then look firstly at what the body of Christ should look like. So we are speaking of the ecclesia, what we believers now call the church. A community of peculiar people who behave not like the world, who do not depend on their sustenance from the world, who claim their own citizenship outside the of this world, and know that their lives are eternally secure with promise of hope and peace.
The Ecclesia is…
- the called out ones – It is the work of God, not men. It is within the divine design that the church is to exist and function. (1 Peter 1:2)
- sanctified through the blood of Christ. (1 Peter 1:2, 1:19)
- to be holy in the pattern of the holiness of the Father (1 Peter 1:15, Lev. 11:45)
- loving one another (1 Peter 1:22, John 13:34, 1 Cor. 13:4)
- founded on the holy Word of God (1 Peter 1:25, 2:2, Matt. 7:24)
- to glorify God in all works (1 Peter 2:12, Matt. 5:16)
- oneness in Christ (Gal. 3:28, 1 Cor. 12:13, John 17:11)
- to be partakers of Christ’s sufferings (1 Peter 4:1, 4:13)
- be given to charity and hospitality (1 Peter 4:8-9,1 Tim. 3:2, Heb. 13:2)
In the next lesson I will expound on the above points. But for now let’s finish with the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his leading paragraph in the chapter The Saints:
The ECCLESIA Christi, the disciple community, has been torn from the clutches of the world. Of course it still has to live in the world, but it is made into one body, with its own sphere of sovereignty, and its own claim to living space. It is the holy Church (Eph. 5:27), the community of saints (1 Cor. 14:33), and its members are called to be saints (Rom. 1:7), sanctified in Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:2), chosen and set apart before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). The object of their calling in Jesus Christ, and of their election before the foundation of the world, was that they should be holy and without blemish (Eph. 1:4). Christ had surrendered his body to death that he might present his own, holy and without blemish and unreprovable before him (Col. 1:22). The fruit of their liberation from sin through the death of Christ is that whereas they once surrendered their members as servants to iniquity, they may now use them in service of righteousness unto sanctification (Rom. 6:19-22).
(The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pg 272)
