When the Spirit was given by the risen Christ, he overturned everything and set it on fire. Then the disciples were able to become a life-sharing community, and only then did their love overflow. They were all on fire with the same burning love, which drew them irresistibly and for always together. Love had become in them a “holy must”. Just as Jesus had always wanted to gather his nearest friends and pupils, whom we call disciples, so the Spirit drew the early Christians radically to one another. Together they felt compelled to live the life of Jesus, and together in complete community, they experienced the powers of the Future.
Only in this way could isolation and its ice-cold existence be overcome. Communal life with its white-hot love began. In its heat, property was melted away in the very foundations. The icy substructures of age-old glaciers melt before God’s sun. All ownership feeds on the stifling self-interest. When deadly selfishness is killed by love, and only then, ownership and all that separates comes to an end. This is how it was in the early church. This is how it still can be: under the influence of the Spirit, community is born, where people do not think in terms of “mine” and “thine”.
by Eberhard Arnold, alt.