Discipleship (Works, Vol 4)

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Rather, any baptized person receives an unrestricted privilege to participate in all areas of the communal life of the members of the body of Christ. To allow other baptized Christians to participate in worship but to refuse to have community with them in everyday life, and to abuse them and treat them with contempt, is to become guilty against the body of Christ itself. To acknowledge that other baptized Christians have received the gifts of salvation, and then to deny them the provisions necessary for this earthly life, or to leave them knowingly in affliction and distress, is to make a mockery of the gift of salvation and to behave like a liar. When the Holy Spirit has spoken, but we still continue to listen to the voice of our race,[35] our nature, or our sympathies and antipathies, we are profaning the sacrament. Baptism into the body of Christ changes not only a person’s personal status with regard to salvation, but also their relationships throughout all of life. The slave Onesimus