The Saints

At a glance

Summary

Bonhoeffer opens the book's longest chapter by grounding sanctity in the same pattern established throughout the book: Paul addresses ordinary, often struggling believers as ‘saints,’ not because they have already achieved moral perfection, but because they have been set apart, chosen and sanctified in Christ before any performance of their own. Holiness, like the righteousness described back in chapter 8, is first a status given rather than earned — which, exactly as before, does not make it optional or merely theoretical, but the ground from which real, costly obedience must now grow.

A substantial portion of the chapter addresses sexual purity and covetousness together, treating them, as chapter 10 already began to, as two forms of the same underlying idolatry — desire that seeks to possess another person or another's goods for the self's own satisfaction, in defiance of the fact that the believer's body now belongs to Christ and to the fellowship of his body described in the previous two chapters. Bonhoeffer is unsparing about how thoroughly this reordering of desire must reach into ordinary daily habits, refusing to let sanctification remain a matter of correct belief while behaviour continues unexamined.

He extends holiness outward into the church's own life of mutual discipline: because the saints are members of one body, sin in one member is never merely private, and the community bears real responsibility for correcting, restoring and, where necessary, excluding those whose conduct threatens the body's own integrity. This is presented not as harsh moralism but as the visible community of the previous chapter taking its own unity seriously enough to protect it.

By the chapter's considerable length, Bonhoeffer is working out, case by case, what it actually looks like for people already declared holy in Christ to become, in practice, what they already are — closing where the whole book keeps closing, on the note that every demand made of the saints rests entirely on a status Christ has already given them, and that final glorying belongs only to him: ‘he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.’

Key points

• ‘Called to be saints’ names a status already given in Christ, not a distant achievement — sanctification, like righteousness earlier, is received before it is lived out.
• Sexual purity and covetousness are treated as two forms of the same idolatry: desire seeking to possess another person or their goods for the self's own satisfaction.
• This reordering of desire is meant to reach into ordinary daily habits, not remain a matter of correct belief with unexamined behaviour.
• Because church members share one body, sin in one member is never merely private — the community bears real responsibility for mutual correction and discipline.
• The chapter's many demands rest entirely on a status already given by Christ; ultimate glorying belongs to him, not to the saints' own achievement.

Related Scripture

• 1 Corinthians 1:2, 30
• 1 Thessalonians 4:3–7
• 1 Corinthians 5:1–5
• Hebrews 12:14

For reflection and discussion

1. Does it change anything for you to think of holiness as a status already given in Christ that you are becoming in practice, rather than a distant goal you might eventually earn?
2. Bonhoeffer treats covetousness and sexual sin as two expressions of the same underlying idolatry of desire. Where do you see that connection in your own temptations?
3. How does your own church community currently practice — or avoid — the kind of mutual responsibility for holiness Bonhoeffer describes here?