The Visible Church

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. MATTHEW 5:14

The first part of Discipleship is about the call of Jesus to the individual. The second part, less often read, is about the church. Bonhoeffer knew that his teaching on the call could be misheard as a kind of heroic individualism — the lonely disciple, set apart from everyone, making his costly choices alone. That was not what he meant. The one who follows Jesus is never left alone. He is received into a company, a body, a people. And that people, Bonhoeffer insisted, is visible. It takes up room in the world.

Called into a body

In the Gospels the disciples could see Jesus and walk behind him on the road. How do we follow him now? Bonhoeffer’s answer was that Christ is present in his body, the church — in the word preached, in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and in the fellowship of his people. We are not further from him than the first disciples; we meet him in the community he has gathered.

Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. ROMANS 6:4

Bonhoeffer wrote about baptism as a break with the old life, a death and a new beginning, a call into Christ’s body. As a Lutheran he held to the baptism of infants, and many readers will differ from him on that. But on this point Christians of every tradition can agree with him: baptism is not a private religious ceremony but an entry into a people. It marks a person as belonging to Christ and to his church, publicly and irreversibly.

A people with a shape

A body, Bonhoeffer pointed out, takes up space. So does the church. It is not merely a set of shared beliefs or an invisible fellowship of souls. It has a place in the world, and it claims that place in three ways.

It claims space for the preaching of the word. Wherever the gospel is proclaimed, there is a public claim that Christ is Lord.

It claims space for worship and the sacraments — for a people gathered at the font and the table, visibly marked as belonging to him.

And it claims space for a common life. The early church, Bonhoeffer noted, did not merely believe together. It lived together. Its members shared their goods, ate together, cared for widows, and made room for one another across every line their world drew.

And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. ACTS 2:44–45

That shared life reached into the most ordinary relationships. When Paul sent the runaway slave Onesimus back to Philemon, he asked him to receive him not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved (Philemon 16). The old order was not abolished at a stroke; but within the church it was already broken open from within.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. GALATIANS 3:28

Bonhoeffer wrote those pages at a time when the German state was demanding that the church exclude Christians of Jewish descent from its ministry. The visible church, as he understood it, could not accept that demand. A church that drew racial lines within its own body would cease to be the body of Christ.

A holy people

The church is not only visible but holy. Bonhoeffer spoke of the church-community of saints — not a society of the morally impressive, but a people set apart by God and called to live accordingly. That meant, among other things, that the church must care about how its members live. He wrote about church discipline, not as a harsh policing of the flock, but as the loving pursuit of a brother who has strayed.

Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. GALATIANS 6:1

The point of discipline, as he understood it, is always restoration. It begins with a private word, spoken in humility; it moves only step by step towards anything more public; and it aims throughout at winning the brother back. A church that never speaks a word of correction is not being kind. It is leaving its members to face their sin alone.

Formed into his image

Discipleship ends with a chapter on the image of Christ. God made humanity in his own image; that image was defaced by sin; and God’s purpose in calling disciples is to restore it. The disciple does not become like Christ by imitating him from a distance. He becomes like Christ by being with him, by following him, and by being conformed to him — to the Christ who became man, was crucified and rose again.

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. ROMANS 8:29

That is where the whole long argument of the book comes to rest. Costly grace, the call, the Sermon on the Mount, the visible church — all of it serves one end: that Christ might take form in his people.

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 CORINTHIANS 3:18

A hard edge

It should be said honestly that Bonhoeffer’s insistence on the visible church had a sharp edge in the 1930s. In the struggle between the Confessing Church and the Nazified church government, he argued that a Christian who knowingly separated himself from the Confessing Church was separating himself from the true church, and this drew strong objection even from his friends. Many readers will think he pressed the point too far. But the concern behind it is worth hearing. There are times when the church’s visible boundaries matter, because to blur them is to deny Christ. The German Christians who welcomed the regime’s demands into their church had shown what happens when they are blurred.

Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come. HEBREWS 13:13–14

The visible church does not hide. It stands where it can be seen, and bears the consequences.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. How visible is your faith, and your church’s life, to the neighbourhood around you? Name one way your congregation takes up space in the world for Christ.

2. Are there lines in your church — of class, race, age or background — that the gospel has not yet crossed? Take one step across such a line this month.

3. If you are baptised, give thanks for it today as your public entry into Christ’s people. If you are not, ask what is holding you back.

4. Is there a brother or sister you have watched drift into sin and said nothing? Pray first; then, humbly and privately, speak.

5. Pray for Christians in places where to belong visibly to the church is costly.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You have not left Your disciples alone. You have gathered them into Your body, and You have set that body like a city on a hill.

Forgive me for wanting a private faith, hidden from the world and untroubled by my neighbours. Make me glad to be seen as Yours.

Break down within Your church the walls the world builds between people. Teach us to live together as brothers and sisters, sharing what we have.

Form Christ in us, until Your image is seen in Your people and the world knows that we are Your disciples by our love. Amen.