Who would have been spared?

I just started a book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer called Life Together, and the very first two paragraphs of the very first two pages knocked me over.

"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" (Ps. 133:1). In the following we shall consider a number of directions and precepts that the Scriptures provide us for our life together under the Word.  

It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privelege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. "The Kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared?" (Luther)

Who would have been spared?

It is not the religious act that makes the Christian...

It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life.  That is metanoia [repentance]: not in the first place thinking about one's own needs, problems, sins, and fears, but allowing oneself to be caught up into the way of Jesus Christ.

--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as quoted by Timothy Keller in The Reason for God.

The Impossibility of Invisible Disciples

From Justin Taylor's Blog:

"Discipleship is as visible as light in the night, as a mountain in the flatlands. To flee into invisibility is to deny the call. Any community of Jesus which wants to be invisible is no longer a community that follows him."

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer