One of the last chapters of The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer is entitled ”The Visible Community.” He writes, “The body of Christ takes up space on earth. That is a consequence of the Incarnation. Anything which claims space is visible. Hence the Body of Christ can only be a visible Body, or else it is not a Body at all. The physical body of the man Jesus is visible to all, his divine sonship only to the eye of faith, just as that Body as the Body of God incarnate is visible only to faith. The Body of Christ has penetrated into the heart of the world in the form of the Church. The baptized Christian is baptized into that Body. Christ has come to him and taken his life into His own, thus robbing the world of its own. The Christian serves the fellowship of the Body of Christ, and he cannot hide it from the world. He is called out of the world to follow Christ.”
