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Excerpt #2 from Bonhoeffer's "The Cost of Discipleship"

        In the following passage, Bonhoeffer writes about the Christian community in relation to the world?  How should we view the world, and how should we interact within it?  For we are no longer of this world, we live in it but are not of it.  The kingdom we are apart of is from another place.

       "The Christians live in the world.  they make use of the world, for they are creatures of flesh and blood, and it was for the sake of their flesh that Christ came into the world.  They indulge in worldly activities.  they get married, but their marriage will look quite different form marriage as the world understands it.  Christan marriage will be undertaken 'in the lord' (1 Cor. 7:39).  It will be sanctified in the service of the Body of Christ and in the discipline of prayer and self-control (1 Cor. 7:5). It will be a parable of the self-sacrificing love of Christ for his Church.  It will even be itself a part of the Body of Christ, a Church in miniature (Eph. 5:32).

         The Christians buy and sell, they engage in trade and commerce, but again in a different spirit from the world.  They will not only refrain from driving a hard bargain with one another (I Thess. 4:6), but (what to the world will appear incomprehensible) they will prefer to let others gain unfair advantage over them and do them injustice, rather than take their case to a pagan law-court over 'things that pertain to this life.'  Should the need arise, they will settle their disputes within the Christian community, and before their own tribunals (I Cor. 6:1-8).

      Thus the life of the Christian community in the world bears permanent witness to the truth that 'the fashion of this world passeth away' (I Cor. 7:31), that the time is short and the Lord is nigh.  This thought fills them with joy unspeakable (Phil. 4:4).  The world is growing too small for the Christian community, and all it looks for is the Lord's return.  It still walks in the flesh, but with eyes upturned to heaven, whence he for whom they wait will come again.  In the world the Christians are a colony of the true home, they are strangers and aliens in a foreign land, enjoying the hospitality of that land, obeying its laws and honouring its government.  They receive with gratitude the requirements of their bodily life, and in all things prove themselves hones, just, chaste, gentle, peaceable, and read to serve. They show the love of God to all men, 'but especially to them that ore of the household of faith' (Gal. 6:10; II Pet. 1:7).

     They are patient and cheerful in suffering, and they glory in tribulation.  They live their own life under alien rulers and alien laws.  Above all, they pray for all in authority, for that is their greatest service.  But they are only passing through the country.  At any moment they may receive the signal to move on.  Then they will strike tents, leaving behind them all their worldly friends and connections, and following only the voice of their Lord who calls.  They leave the land of their exile, and start their homeward trek to heaven."

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