Jesus' classic description of a disciple is one who is in a loving relationship with other disciples. His only commandment necessitates fellowship with other believers. There is no such thing as a congregation of one. We ask the root, and it answers, 'No, my life is in the trunk and the branches and the leaves. So it is with the great tree of being.
Nothing is completely and merely individual.
Another famous preacher, Peter Marshall, was known as a man of fierce personal pride and no small ambition, but he also had a consistent grasp of the connection between Godliness and good human relationships. And when we are right, make us easy to live with. There is a stirring account of the imprisonment of Bishop Hanns Lilje in 1944. It was a Saturday afternoon in August. He was in his study putting the final touches on the sermon he was to preach the next day in St. John's Church, Berlin.