This is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book
Life Together. He talks about christian community and what it really means to love one another. I can't help but completely agree...
"In their freedom from me, other persons want to be loved for who they are, as those for whom Christ became a human being, died, and rose again, as those for whom Christ won the forgiveness of sins and prepared eternal life….
Self-centered love construct it’s own image of other persons, about what they are and what they should become. It takes the life of the other person into it’s own hands. Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other person as seen from the perspective of Jesus Christ. It is the image Jesus Christ has formed and wants to form in all people.
Spiritual love will prove successful insofar as it commends Christ to the others in all that it says and does. It will not seek to agitate another by exerting all too personal, direct influence or by crudely interfering in one’s life. It will not take pleasure in pious, emotional fervor and excitement. Rather, it will encounter the other with the clear Word of God and be prepared to leave the other alone with this word for a long time. It will be willing to release others again so that Christ may deal with them. It will respect the other as the boundary that Christ establishes between us; and it will find full community with the other in the Christ who alone binds us together. This spiritual love will thus speak to Christ about the other Christian more than to the other Christian about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ and that love of another is completely tied to the Truth found in Christ. It is out of this love that John the disciple speaks: ‘I have no greater joy that this, to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” (3 john 4)
