During his all too brief ministry, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a wonderful little book entitled Life Together: A Discussion of Christian Fellowship. In this book’s 120 or so pages, Bonhoeffer reminds his readers that life in Christ is life with others. Again, according to Bonhoeffer, life in Christ is not life in isolation; life in Christ is life with others in the Church.

To be sure, Bonhoeffer’s vision of the Church is not some idealistic community in which all our needs are met, in an extravagant way and in a timely fashion. Instead, his vision of life in the Church includes putting the needs of others before our personal needs, listening when we would rather speak, serving when we would rather rest. Life in Christ, which is life in the Church, is challenging. And it changes us.

For example, consider reading, hearing, and understanding the Bible. Some would say that the Bible means whatever they think it means. In our daily devotions, in our daily Bible reading, God does speak to each of us in different ways. Life in Christ certainly encourages this devotional reading of the Bible. But when the Bible is preached and taught in the Church, the Bible is not just taken devotionally. Most importantly, the Bible is interpreted with the help of the Church’s creeds – such at The Apostles’ Creed and The Nicene Creed. The Bible, when taken with the creeds, results in the Church’s dogma – the Church’s most foundational truth. Next in importance is the Bible understood with the help of a church’s doctrine. So, in The United Methodist Church, we read the Bible well with The Articles of Religion in mind.

Life in Christ is life in the Church. Therefore, God’s Word addresses the Church, most deeply, through the Bible and the Church’s creeds (or dogma). God’s Word also speaks to the Church through the Bible and a church’s doctrines. Finally, God speaks to each of us as we read the Bible devotionally. So life in Christ gives us patience to receive dogmatic and doctrinal understandings of the Bible before we rush to understand the Bible in only our devotional way.

Some would say that putting the dogmatic Bible and the doctrinal Bible before the devotional Bible takes power from the Bible. In fact, the opposite is true. When the Bible is read and heard, received and interpreted, trusted and obeyed, in community, the entire community is forgiven and empowered and instructed and humbled by God’s Word.

Again, ours is a life together, not a life in isolation. Life in Christ is life in the Church.