Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer—(1906 –1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, participant in the German Resistance movement against Nazism, and a founding member of the Confessing Church. He was involved in plots planned by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He was arrested in March 1943, imprisoned, and eventually hanged just before the end of the World War II in Europe. Bonhoeffer spent two years in prison, corresponding with family and friends, pastoring fellow prisoners, and reflecting on the meaning of "Jesus Christ for today." As the months progressed, be began outlining a new theology, penning enigmatic lines that had been inspired by his reflections on the nature of Christian action in history.
"God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross," he wrote. "He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. [The Bible] … makes quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering. … The Bible directs man to God's powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help."
His Cost of Discipleship, as well as Life Together (about Christian community, based on his teaching at the underground seminary), have remained devotional classics.
Quotes
“Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.”
-Dietrich Bonhoffer
“But to deviate from the truth for the sake of some prospect of hope of our own can never be wise, however sight that deviation may be. It is not our judgment of the situation which can show us what is wise, but only the truth of the Word of God. Here alone lies the promise of God’s faithfulness and help. It will always be true that the wisest course for the disciple is always to abide solely by the Word of God in all simplicity.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The only thing we take with us is our obedience”
-Dietrich Bonhoffer
“True mortification of our carnal nature is not a simple matter of denial and discipline. It is an internal, spiritual matter of finding more contentment in Christ than in food. The flesh resists this daily humiliation, first by a frontal attack, and later by hiding itself under the words of the Spirit (i.e., in the name of “evangelical liberty”). We claim liberty from all legal compulsions, from self-martyrdom and mortification and play this off against the proper evangelical use of discipline and asceticism; we thus excuse our self-indulgence and irregularity in prayer, in meditation and in our bodily life. But the contrast between our behavior and the word of Jesus is all too painfully evident. We forget that discipleship means estrangement from the world, and we forget the real joy and freedom which are the outcome of a devout rule of life.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“When Christ calls a man, “he bids him come and die,” there are different kinds of dying, it is true; but the essence of discipleship is contained in those words”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Man must follow him who has served and passed through this world as the living, the dying and the risen Lord. Therefore, wherever it pleases God to put man in this world, the Christina must be ready for martyrdom and death. It is only in this way that man learns faith.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“When a man really gives up trying to make something out of him-self-a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman, a righteous or unrighteous man…when in the fullness of tasks, questions, success or ill-hap, experiences and perplexities, a man throws himself into the arms of God…then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, that is metanoia and it is thus that he becomes a man and Christian. How can a man wax arrogant if in a this-sided life he shares the suffering of God?”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Cheap Grace and Costly Grace: “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack’s wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessing with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits…Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘ye were bought at a price’, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Give me such love for God and men, as will blot out all hatred and bitterness… A Christian is someone who shares the suffering of God in the world.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Death is the supreme festival on the road to freedom”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Happy are they who know that discipleship simple means the life which springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Share my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and death. Come with me in my death, come with me in my suffering, come with me as I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Who am I?
This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me,
these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know them-selves to be poor and imperfect, who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manger. God comes. The Lord Jesus comes. Christmas comes. Christians rejoice!".. When once again Christmas comes and we hear the familiar carols and sing the Christmas hymns, something happens to us… The hardest heart is softened. We recall our own childhood. We feel again how we then felt, especially if we were separated from a mother. A kind of homesickness comes over us for past times, distant places, and yes, a blessed longing for a world without violence or hardness of heart. There is something more; a longing for the safe lodging of the everlasting Father. And that leads our thoughts to the curse of homelessness which hangs heavily over the world."…. Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Share my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and death. Come with me in my death, come with me in my suffering, come with me as I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs. It is therefore the living Word, the Word of God, which God speaks as it pleases God. Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a person to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light…”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: A Testament to Freedom (pg308)
“Is the price we are paying today with the collapse of the organized churches anything else but an inevitable consequence of grace acquired too cheaply? We gave away preaching and sacraments cheaply; we performed baptisms and confirmations; we absolved an entire people, unquestioned and unconditionally; out of human love we handed over what was holy to the scornful and unbelievers. We poured out rivers of grace without end, but the call to rigorously follow Christ was seldom heard. What happened to the insights of the ancient church, which in the baptismal teaching watches so carefully over the boundary between the church and the world, over costly grace? What happened to Luther’s warning against a proclamation of the gospel which made people secure in their godless lives? When was the world ever Christianized more dreadfully and wickedly than here?...The biblical wisdom that the sin of the fathers are visited on the children unto the third and fourth generation has become true in us. Cheap grace was very unmerciful to our Protestant church.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Discipleship (pg53-54)
“Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living lies and hypocrisy….He who is alone with his sins is utterly alone.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Without Christ we should not know God, we could not call upon Him, nor come to Him. But without Christ we also would not know our brother, nor could we come to him. The way is blocked by our own ego. Christ opened up the way to God and to our brother."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
"All we may rightly expect from God, and ask him for is to be found in Jesus Christ...If we are to learn what God promises...we must persevere in quiet meditation on the life, sayings, deeds, sufferings, and death of Jesus...it is certain that our joy is hidden in suffering, and our life in death; it is certain that in all this we are in a fellowship that sustains us...You must never doubt that I am traveling in gratitude and cheerfulness along the road where I am being led."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(Advent envisions us waiting for the one who breaks in and sets us free. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who knew well the cold walls of a prison cell, writes this of our confinement:)
"Christ is breaking open his way to you. He wants to again soften your heart, which has become hard. In these weeks of Advent while we are waiting for Christmas, he calls to us that he is coming and that he will rescue us from the prison of our existence, from fear, guilt, and loneliness. Do you want to be redeemed? This is the one great question Advent puts before us.... But let us make no mistake about it. Redemption is drawing near. Only the question is: Will we let it come to us as well or will we resist it? Will we let ourselves be pulled into this movement coming down from heaven to earth or will we refuse to have anything to do with it? Either with us or without us, Christmas will come. It is up to each individual to decide what it will be.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake. Spiritual love loves others for Christ’s sake”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don’t do, and more in light of what they suffer."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The church is the church only when it exists for others…The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer; (words written in prison in 1944)
“In our meditation we ponder the chosen text on the strength of the promise that it has something utterly
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The weaknesses, sins and afflictions of my brother and sisters effect each one of us. We bear with one another”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"The unity of the Christian church is not based on human unanimity of spirit, but on divine unity of Spirit"
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“You do not have to go on lying to yourself and your brothers you can dare to be a sinner”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“the Church is only the church when it exists for others”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The Church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating but helping and serving others”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Christ is at the center of life and history. How does he exercise his Lordship today? Though powerlessness, service and the cross”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Jesus does not call men to a new religion, but to life.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Papers from Prison (p.123-124)
“The Gospel must be lived out not individually, but in community.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Sunset Forgiveness: “It is an old custom of the monasteries that by set practice in the daily evening worship the abbot asks his brothers to forgive him for all the sins of omission and wrongdoings committed against them. After the brothers assure him of their forgiveness, they likewise ask the abbot to forgive them for their sins of omission and wrongdoings and receive his forgiveness. “Do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Eph. 4:26). It is a decisive rule of every Christian community that every division that the day has caused must be healed in the evening. It is perilous for the Christians to go to bed with an un-reconciled heart. Therefore, it is a good idea especially to include the request for mutual forgiveness in every evening’s prayers, so that reconciliation can be achieved and renewal of the community established.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Life Together
The End of the Day: “In all the old evening prayers, it is striking how frequently we encounter their plea for perseveration during the night form the devil, for terror and from an evil, sudden death. The ancients were keenly aware of human helplessness while sleeping, the kinship of sleep with death, and the devil’s cunning in causing our downfall when we are defenseless…Most remarkable and profound is the ancient church’s request that, when our eyes are closed in sleep, God may nevertheless keep our hearts alert to God. It is a prayer that God may dwell with us and in us, even when we feel and know nothing, that God may keep our hearts pure and holy in spite of all the worries and temptations of the night, that God may prepare our hearts to hear the call at any time and, like the boy Samuel, answer even in the night, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening” (I Sam. 3:10). Even while sleeping we are in the hands of God or in the power of the evil one. Even while we sleep, God can perform miracles upon us or the evil one can cause devastation in us. So we pray in the evening: “Though our eyes in sleep will close, /May our hearts in you repose, / Protect us, God with your right arm, /And shield our souls from sin’s cruel harm” (Luther). But the word of the Psalter stands over the morning and evening: “Yours is the day, yours also the night” (Ps. 74:16)
“The first service we owe to one another is to learn to listen to them”
-Deitrich Bonhoeffer
“To be simple is to fix one’s eye solely on the simple truth of God at a time when all concepts are being confused, distorted, and turned upside-down”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Only the obedient believe. If we are to believe, we must obey a concrete command. Without this preliminary step of obedience, our faith will only be pious humbug, and lead us to the grace which is not costly. Everything depends on the first step. It has a unique quality of its own. The first step of obedience makes Peter leave his nets, and later get out of the ship; it calls upon the young man to leave his riches. Only this new existence, created through obedience, can make faith possible.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct if for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won where the way leads to the cross”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Who can really be faithful in great things if he has not learned to be faithful in the things of daily life?”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“I believe that nothing meaningless has happened to me and also that it is good for us when things run counter to our desires. I see a purpose in my present existence and only hope that I fulfill it.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Source: letters from Prison, 1944
"Where the world despises other members of the Christian family, Christians will love and serve them. If the world does violence to them, Christians will help them and provide them relief. Where the world subjects them to dishonor and insult, Christians will sacrifice their own honor in exchange for their disgrace. Where the world seeks gain, Christians will renounce it; where it exploits, they will let go; where it oppresses, they will stoop down and lift up the oppressed. Where the world denies justice, Christians will practice compassion; where it hides behind lies, they will speak out for those who cannot speak, and testify for the truth. For the sake of brothers or sisters-be they Jew or Greek, slave or free, strong or weak, of noble or common birth-Christians will renounce all community with the world, for they serve the community of the body of Jesus Christ. Being a part of this community, Christians cannot remain hidden from the world. They have been called out of the world and follow Christ."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Only the obedient believe. A concrete commandment has to be obeyed in order to come to believe. A first step of obedience has to be taken, so that faith does not become pious self-deception, cheap grace. The first step is crucial. It is qualitatively different from all others that follow. The first step of obedience has to lead Peter away from his nets and out of the boat; it has to lead the young man away from his wealth. Faith is possible only in this new state of existence created by obedience.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“We pay more attention to dying than to death. We’re more concerned to get over the act of dying than to overcome death. Socrates mastered the art of dying; Christ overcame death as the last enemy. There is a real difference between the two things; the one is within the scope of human possibilities, the other means resurrection.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"The morning prayer determines the day. Squandered time of which we are ashamed, temptations to which we succumb, weakness and lack of courage in work, disorganization and lack of discipline in our thoughts and in our conversation with others, all have their own origin most often in the neglect of morning prayer. Order and distribution of our time become more firm where they originate in prayer. Temptations which accompany the working day will be conquered on the basis of the morning breakthrough to God. Decisions, demanded by work, become easier and simpler where they are made not in the fear of men but only in the sight of God. “Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men” (Col. 3:23). Even mechanical work is done in a more patient way if it arises from the recognition of God and his command. The powers to work take hold, therefore, at the place where we have prayed to God. He wants to give us today the power which we need for our work."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Psalms: The Prayer Book of God’s People
“Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffers
“We confess that, although our Church is orthodox as far as her doctrine of grace is concerned, we are no longer sure that we are members of a Church which follows its Lord. We must therefore attempt to recover a true understanding of the mutual relation between grace and discipleship.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship, p. 55.
“Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to humankind and the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being Christians today will be limited to two things: prayer and the doing of justice.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (1971, page 300)
“Complete truthfulness is only possible where sin has been uncovered, and forgiven by Jesus. Only those who are in a state of truthfulness through the confession of their sin to Jesus are not ashamed to tell the truth wherever it must be told. The truthfulness which Jesus demands from his followers is the self-abnegation which does not hide sin. Nothing is then hidden, everything is brought forth to the light of day. … In this question of truthfulness, what matters first and last is that a man’s whole being should be exposed, his whole evil laid bare in the sight of God. … The cross is God’s truth about us, and therefore it is the only power which can make us truthful. When we know the cross we are no longer afraid of the truth.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Cost of Discipleship, (pp. 138-39)
“Are you worried because you find it so hard to believe? Don’t be surprised at the difficulty of faith, if there is some part of your life where you are consciously resisting or disobeying the commandment of Jesus. Is there some part of your life which you are refusing to surrender at his behest, some sinful passion, maybe, or some animosity, some hope, perhaps your ambition or your reason? If so, you must not be surprised that you have not received the Holy Spirit, that prayer is difficult, or that your request for faith remains unanswered...The person who disobeys cannot believe. Only if you obey can you believe.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
"God offers life, but not an improved old life. The life He offers is life out of death. It stands always on the far side of the cross. Among the plastic saints of our times Jesus has to do all the dying and all we want is to hear another sermon about His dying. We want to be saved but we insist that Christ do all the dying. No cross for us, no dethronement, no dying. We remain king ... and wear our tinsel crown with all the pride of a Caesar; but we doom ourselves to shadows and weakness and spiritual sterility.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the fellowship must enter every day”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“It matters little what form of prayer we adopt or how many words we use. What matters is the faith which lays hold on God, knowing that He knows our needs before we even ask Him. That is what gives Christian prayer its boundless confidence and its joyous certainty.”
–Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
–Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The followers of Jesus have been called to peace. When he called them they found their peace, for he is their peace. But now they are told that they must not only have peace but make it. And to that end they renounce all violence and tumult.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
“The renewal of the earth begins at Golgotha, where the meek One died, and from thence it will spread. When the kingdom finally comes, the meek shall possess the earth.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Source: The Cost of Discipleship
“Who is pure of heart? Only those who have surrendered their hearts completely to Jesus that he may reign in them alone. Only those whose hearts are undefiled by their own evil—and by their own virtues too”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
“Jesus demands nothing from us without giving us the strength to comply. Jesus’ commandment never wishes to destroy life, but rather to preserve, strengthen, and heal life.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
“God does not give us everything we want, but he does fulfil all his promises, i.e. he still remains Lord of the earth and still preserves his Church, constantly renewing our faith and not laying on us more than we can bear, gladdening us with his nearness and help, hearing our prayers and leading us along the best and straightest road to himself. In this way, God creates in us praise for himself.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“One thing is certain: we must always live close to the presence of God, for that is newness of life; and then nothing is impossible for all things are possible with God”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross," he wrote. "He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. [The Bible] ... makes quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering. ... The Bible directs man to God's powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“We are entering a new year. Many human plans and mistakes, much animosity and misery will determine our path. Yet as long as we remain with Jesus and walk with him, we may be assured that nothing can happen to us that God has not foreseen, willed, and promised beforehand. The consolation of a life that is lived with Jesus is that of this life, too, it will be said: It was fulfilled what the Lord has spoken. Amen.”
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Thrown in prison for his complicity in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled between postures of faith and despair, such that he began to wonder what his true position was. To a lifelong friend, he admitted the struggle between knowing that God was there and grieving the uncertainty of what God was doing. “And finally, I must begin to tell you that, despite all I have written in my letters, it is disgusting here. My gruesome experiences often follow me into the darkness of the night, and I can only combat them by repeating innumerable hymns… You write to encourage and say that I ‘bear it all so well.’ I ask myself often who I really am. Am I the man who squirms under these ghastly conditions and cries out with complaints or am I the man who disciplines himself to appear outwardly unaffected by these things? And perhaps persuades himself that he is at peace, content, and in control of himself. Is he playing a part as in a stage play, or not? What does this ‘posture’ really mean?”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 161-162.
“We are entering a new year. Many human plans and mistakes, much animosity and misery will determine our path. Yet as long as we remain with Jesus and walk with him, we may be assured that nothing can happen to us that God has not foreseen, willed, and promised beforehand. The consolation of a life that is lived with Jesus is that of this life, too, it will be said: It was fulfilled what the Lord has spoken. Amen.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“There is a certain inclination in human nature to keep off from all problems that might make us feel uncomfortable in our own situation.“
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, London, 1934
What is the “extraordinary”? It is the love of Jesus Christ himself, who goes to the cross in suffering and obedience. It is the cross. What is unique in Christianity is the cross.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 1937
“I believe that nothing meaningless has happened to me and also that it is good for us when things run counter to our desires. I see a purpose in my present existence and only hope that I fulfill it.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“There is a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the other person has to say. It is an impatient, inattentive listening, that despises the brother and is only waiting for a chance to speak and thus get rid of the other person. This is no fulfillment of our obligation, and it is certain that here too our attitude toward our brother only reflects our relationship to God.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Bearing the cross does not bring misery and despair. Rather, it provides refreshment and peace for our souls; it is our greatest joy. Here we are no longer laden with self-made laws and burdens, but with the yoke of him who knows us and who himself goes with us under the same yoke. Under his yoke we are assured of nearness and communion. It is he himself who disciples find when they take up their cross.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer DBWE 4:91.
“Christ’s vicarious deeds and particularly his death on our behalf, become in turn the principle and model of self-sacrifice that makes community possible…The church is the church only when it exists for others.”
-Dietrich Bonhoffer, A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Whoever enters discipleship enters Jesus’ death, and puts his or her own life into death; this has been so from the beginning. The cross is not the horrible end of a pious, happy life, but stands rather at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Bread and Wine
“Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
“Who is able to withstand evil? Only those whose final standard is not their own reason, principles, conscience, freedom, or virtue, but who are ready to sacrifice all this when called to obedient and responsible actions in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God – people who try to make their whole life an answer to the question and call of God.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Widerstand und Ergebung
In confession the break-through to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the Gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin must be brought into the light. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a hard struggle until the sin is openly admitted. But God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron (Ps. 107:16).
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Whoever enters discipleship enters Jesus’ death, and puts his or her own life into death; this has been so from the beginning. The cross is not the horrible end of a pious, happy life, but stands rather at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won where the way leads to the cross.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
Are you worried because you find it so hard to believe? Don’t be surprised at the difficulty of faith, if there is some part of your life where you are consciously resisting or disobeying the commandment of Jesus. Is there some part of your life which you are refusing to surrender at his behest, some sinful passion, maybe, or some animosity, some hope, perhaps your ambition or your reason? If so, you must not be surprised that you have not received the Holy Spirit, that prayer is difficult, or that your request for faith remains unanswered....The person who disobeys cannot believe. Only if you obey can you believe.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
“Like ravens we have gathered around the carcass of cheap grace. From it we have imbibed the poison that has killed the following of Jesus among us.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
The poet Stifter once said, “Pain is a holy angel, who shows treasures to people which would otherwise remain forever hidden; through him people have become greater than through all the joys of the world.” It must be so and I tell myself this in my present situation over and over again. The pain of suffering and of longing, which can often be felt even physically, must be there, and we cannot and need not talk it away. But it needs to be overcome every time, and thus there is an even holier angel than the one of pain; that is, the one of joy in God.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Martyred Christians: 160 Readings
“A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. As long as I am by myself in the confession of my sins everything remains in the dark, but in the presence of a brother the sin has to be brought into the light. “
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Our brother… has been given to us to help us. He hears the confession of our sins in Christ’s stead and he forgives our sins in Christ’s name. He keeps the secret of our confession as God keeps it. When I go to my brother to confess, I am going to God.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Only the obedient believe. If we are to believe, we must obey a concrete command. Without this preliminary step of obedience, our faith will only be pious humbug, and lead us to the grace which is not costly. Everything depends on the first step. It has a unique quality of its own. The first step of obedience makes Peter leave his nets, and later get out of the ship; it calls upon the young man to leave his riches. Only this new existence, created through obedience, can make faith possible.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
“The richness of God’s Word ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“…the psalms teach us to pray as a fellowship. The Body of Christ is praying, and as an individual one acknowledges that his prayer is only a minute fragment of the whole prayer of the Church. He learns to pray the prayer of the Body of Christ. and that lifts him above his personal concerns and allows him to pray selflessly.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Source: Life Together, 48-49.
“The Psalter is the great school of prayer…It means praying according to the Word of God, on the basis of promise. Christian prayer takes its stand on the solid ground of promises of the revealed Word and has nothing to do with vague, self-seeking vagaries.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Source: Life Together, 47.
“But every common devotion should include the word of Scripture, the hymns of the Church, and the prayer of the fellowship.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Source: Life Together, 44.
“With remarkable frequency the Scriptures remind us that the men of God rose early to seek God and carry out His commands, as did Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Joshua (cf. Gen.19.27, 22.3; Ex.9.13, 24.4; Josh.3.1, 6.12, etc.). The Gospel, which never speaks a superfluous word, says of Jesus himself: “And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed” (Mark 1.35). Some rise early because of restlessness and worry; the Scriptures call this unprofitable: “It is vain for you to rise early… to eat the bread of sorrows” (Ps. 127.2). But there is such a thing as rising early for the love of God. This was the practice of the men of the Bible.“
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Source: Life Together, 43-44.
“The first thing to remember is not to get impatient with yourself. Do not cramp yourself in despair at the wandering of your thoughts. Just sit down each day and wait patiently. If your thoughts keep running away, do not attempt to restrict them. It is no bother to let them run on to their destination; then, however, take up the place or the person to whom they have strayed into your prayers. In this way you will find yourself back to the text, and the minutes of such digressions will not be wasted and will not trouble you.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The church today is that community of people which is gripped by the power of the grace of Christ so that, recognizing as guilt towards Jesus Christ both its personal sin and the apostasy of the Western world from Jesus Christ, it confesses this guilt and accepts the burden of it. It is [in the church] that Jesus realizes his form in the midst of the world. That is why the church alone can be the place of personal and collective rebirth and renewal.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Ethics
"God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross," he wrote. "He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. [The Bible] … makes quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering. … The Bible directs man to God's powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help."
His Cost of Discipleship, as well as Life Together (about Christian community, based on his teaching at the underground seminary), have remained devotional classics.
Quotes
“Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.”
-Dietrich Bonhoffer
“But to deviate from the truth for the sake of some prospect of hope of our own can never be wise, however sight that deviation may be. It is not our judgment of the situation which can show us what is wise, but only the truth of the Word of God. Here alone lies the promise of God’s faithfulness and help. It will always be true that the wisest course for the disciple is always to abide solely by the Word of God in all simplicity.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The only thing we take with us is our obedience”
-Dietrich Bonhoffer
“True mortification of our carnal nature is not a simple matter of denial and discipline. It is an internal, spiritual matter of finding more contentment in Christ than in food. The flesh resists this daily humiliation, first by a frontal attack, and later by hiding itself under the words of the Spirit (i.e., in the name of “evangelical liberty”). We claim liberty from all legal compulsions, from self-martyrdom and mortification and play this off against the proper evangelical use of discipline and asceticism; we thus excuse our self-indulgence and irregularity in prayer, in meditation and in our bodily life. But the contrast between our behavior and the word of Jesus is all too painfully evident. We forget that discipleship means estrangement from the world, and we forget the real joy and freedom which are the outcome of a devout rule of life.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“When Christ calls a man, “he bids him come and die,” there are different kinds of dying, it is true; but the essence of discipleship is contained in those words”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Man must follow him who has served and passed through this world as the living, the dying and the risen Lord. Therefore, wherever it pleases God to put man in this world, the Christina must be ready for martyrdom and death. It is only in this way that man learns faith.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“When a man really gives up trying to make something out of him-self-a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman, a righteous or unrighteous man…when in the fullness of tasks, questions, success or ill-hap, experiences and perplexities, a man throws himself into the arms of God…then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, that is metanoia and it is thus that he becomes a man and Christian. How can a man wax arrogant if in a this-sided life he shares the suffering of God?”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Cheap Grace and Costly Grace: “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack’s wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessing with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits…Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘ye were bought at a price’, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Give me such love for God and men, as will blot out all hatred and bitterness… A Christian is someone who shares the suffering of God in the world.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Death is the supreme festival on the road to freedom”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Happy are they who know that discipleship simple means the life which springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Share my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and death. Come with me in my death, come with me in my suffering, come with me as I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Who am I?
This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me,
these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know them-selves to be poor and imperfect, who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manger. God comes. The Lord Jesus comes. Christmas comes. Christians rejoice!".. When once again Christmas comes and we hear the familiar carols and sing the Christmas hymns, something happens to us… The hardest heart is softened. We recall our own childhood. We feel again how we then felt, especially if we were separated from a mother. A kind of homesickness comes over us for past times, distant places, and yes, a blessed longing for a world without violence or hardness of heart. There is something more; a longing for the safe lodging of the everlasting Father. And that leads our thoughts to the curse of homelessness which hangs heavily over the world."…. Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Share my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and death. Come with me in my death, come with me in my suffering, come with me as I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs. It is therefore the living Word, the Word of God, which God speaks as it pleases God. Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a person to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light…”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: A Testament to Freedom (pg308)
“Is the price we are paying today with the collapse of the organized churches anything else but an inevitable consequence of grace acquired too cheaply? We gave away preaching and sacraments cheaply; we performed baptisms and confirmations; we absolved an entire people, unquestioned and unconditionally; out of human love we handed over what was holy to the scornful and unbelievers. We poured out rivers of grace without end, but the call to rigorously follow Christ was seldom heard. What happened to the insights of the ancient church, which in the baptismal teaching watches so carefully over the boundary between the church and the world, over costly grace? What happened to Luther’s warning against a proclamation of the gospel which made people secure in their godless lives? When was the world ever Christianized more dreadfully and wickedly than here?...The biblical wisdom that the sin of the fathers are visited on the children unto the third and fourth generation has become true in us. Cheap grace was very unmerciful to our Protestant church.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Discipleship (pg53-54)
“Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living lies and hypocrisy….He who is alone with his sins is utterly alone.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Without Christ we should not know God, we could not call upon Him, nor come to Him. But without Christ we also would not know our brother, nor could we come to him. The way is blocked by our own ego. Christ opened up the way to God and to our brother."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
"All we may rightly expect from God, and ask him for is to be found in Jesus Christ...If we are to learn what God promises...we must persevere in quiet meditation on the life, sayings, deeds, sufferings, and death of Jesus...it is certain that our joy is hidden in suffering, and our life in death; it is certain that in all this we are in a fellowship that sustains us...You must never doubt that I am traveling in gratitude and cheerfulness along the road where I am being led."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(Advent envisions us waiting for the one who breaks in and sets us free. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who knew well the cold walls of a prison cell, writes this of our confinement:)
"Christ is breaking open his way to you. He wants to again soften your heart, which has become hard. In these weeks of Advent while we are waiting for Christmas, he calls to us that he is coming and that he will rescue us from the prison of our existence, from fear, guilt, and loneliness. Do you want to be redeemed? This is the one great question Advent puts before us.... But let us make no mistake about it. Redemption is drawing near. Only the question is: Will we let it come to us as well or will we resist it? Will we let ourselves be pulled into this movement coming down from heaven to earth or will we refuse to have anything to do with it? Either with us or without us, Christmas will come. It is up to each individual to decide what it will be.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake. Spiritual love loves others for Christ’s sake”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don’t do, and more in light of what they suffer."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The church is the church only when it exists for others…The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer; (words written in prison in 1944)
“In our meditation we ponder the chosen text on the strength of the promise that it has something utterly
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The weaknesses, sins and afflictions of my brother and sisters effect each one of us. We bear with one another”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"The unity of the Christian church is not based on human unanimity of spirit, but on divine unity of Spirit"
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“You do not have to go on lying to yourself and your brothers you can dare to be a sinner”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“the Church is only the church when it exists for others”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The Church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating but helping and serving others”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Christ is at the center of life and history. How does he exercise his Lordship today? Though powerlessness, service and the cross”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Jesus does not call men to a new religion, but to life.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Papers from Prison (p.123-124)
“The Gospel must be lived out not individually, but in community.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Sunset Forgiveness: “It is an old custom of the monasteries that by set practice in the daily evening worship the abbot asks his brothers to forgive him for all the sins of omission and wrongdoings committed against them. After the brothers assure him of their forgiveness, they likewise ask the abbot to forgive them for their sins of omission and wrongdoings and receive his forgiveness. “Do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Eph. 4:26). It is a decisive rule of every Christian community that every division that the day has caused must be healed in the evening. It is perilous for the Christians to go to bed with an un-reconciled heart. Therefore, it is a good idea especially to include the request for mutual forgiveness in every evening’s prayers, so that reconciliation can be achieved and renewal of the community established.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Life Together
The End of the Day: “In all the old evening prayers, it is striking how frequently we encounter their plea for perseveration during the night form the devil, for terror and from an evil, sudden death. The ancients were keenly aware of human helplessness while sleeping, the kinship of sleep with death, and the devil’s cunning in causing our downfall when we are defenseless…Most remarkable and profound is the ancient church’s request that, when our eyes are closed in sleep, God may nevertheless keep our hearts alert to God. It is a prayer that God may dwell with us and in us, even when we feel and know nothing, that God may keep our hearts pure and holy in spite of all the worries and temptations of the night, that God may prepare our hearts to hear the call at any time and, like the boy Samuel, answer even in the night, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening” (I Sam. 3:10). Even while sleeping we are in the hands of God or in the power of the evil one. Even while we sleep, God can perform miracles upon us or the evil one can cause devastation in us. So we pray in the evening: “Though our eyes in sleep will close, /May our hearts in you repose, / Protect us, God with your right arm, /And shield our souls from sin’s cruel harm” (Luther). But the word of the Psalter stands over the morning and evening: “Yours is the day, yours also the night” (Ps. 74:16)
“The first service we owe to one another is to learn to listen to them”
-Deitrich Bonhoeffer
“To be simple is to fix one’s eye solely on the simple truth of God at a time when all concepts are being confused, distorted, and turned upside-down”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Only the obedient believe. If we are to believe, we must obey a concrete command. Without this preliminary step of obedience, our faith will only be pious humbug, and lead us to the grace which is not costly. Everything depends on the first step. It has a unique quality of its own. The first step of obedience makes Peter leave his nets, and later get out of the ship; it calls upon the young man to leave his riches. Only this new existence, created through obedience, can make faith possible.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct if for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won where the way leads to the cross”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Who can really be faithful in great things if he has not learned to be faithful in the things of daily life?”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“I believe that nothing meaningless has happened to me and also that it is good for us when things run counter to our desires. I see a purpose in my present existence and only hope that I fulfill it.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Source: letters from Prison, 1944
"Where the world despises other members of the Christian family, Christians will love and serve them. If the world does violence to them, Christians will help them and provide them relief. Where the world subjects them to dishonor and insult, Christians will sacrifice their own honor in exchange for their disgrace. Where the world seeks gain, Christians will renounce it; where it exploits, they will let go; where it oppresses, they will stoop down and lift up the oppressed. Where the world denies justice, Christians will practice compassion; where it hides behind lies, they will speak out for those who cannot speak, and testify for the truth. For the sake of brothers or sisters-be they Jew or Greek, slave or free, strong or weak, of noble or common birth-Christians will renounce all community with the world, for they serve the community of the body of Jesus Christ. Being a part of this community, Christians cannot remain hidden from the world. They have been called out of the world and follow Christ."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Only the obedient believe. A concrete commandment has to be obeyed in order to come to believe. A first step of obedience has to be taken, so that faith does not become pious self-deception, cheap grace. The first step is crucial. It is qualitatively different from all others that follow. The first step of obedience has to lead Peter away from his nets and out of the boat; it has to lead the young man away from his wealth. Faith is possible only in this new state of existence created by obedience.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“We pay more attention to dying than to death. We’re more concerned to get over the act of dying than to overcome death. Socrates mastered the art of dying; Christ overcame death as the last enemy. There is a real difference between the two things; the one is within the scope of human possibilities, the other means resurrection.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"The morning prayer determines the day. Squandered time of which we are ashamed, temptations to which we succumb, weakness and lack of courage in work, disorganization and lack of discipline in our thoughts and in our conversation with others, all have their own origin most often in the neglect of morning prayer. Order and distribution of our time become more firm where they originate in prayer. Temptations which accompany the working day will be conquered on the basis of the morning breakthrough to God. Decisions, demanded by work, become easier and simpler where they are made not in the fear of men but only in the sight of God. “Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men” (Col. 3:23). Even mechanical work is done in a more patient way if it arises from the recognition of God and his command. The powers to work take hold, therefore, at the place where we have prayed to God. He wants to give us today the power which we need for our work."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Psalms: The Prayer Book of God’s People
“Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffers
“We confess that, although our Church is orthodox as far as her doctrine of grace is concerned, we are no longer sure that we are members of a Church which follows its Lord. We must therefore attempt to recover a true understanding of the mutual relation between grace and discipleship.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship, p. 55.
“Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to humankind and the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being Christians today will be limited to two things: prayer and the doing of justice.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (1971, page 300)
“Complete truthfulness is only possible where sin has been uncovered, and forgiven by Jesus. Only those who are in a state of truthfulness through the confession of their sin to Jesus are not ashamed to tell the truth wherever it must be told. The truthfulness which Jesus demands from his followers is the self-abnegation which does not hide sin. Nothing is then hidden, everything is brought forth to the light of day. … In this question of truthfulness, what matters first and last is that a man’s whole being should be exposed, his whole evil laid bare in the sight of God. … The cross is God’s truth about us, and therefore it is the only power which can make us truthful. When we know the cross we are no longer afraid of the truth.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Cost of Discipleship, (pp. 138-39)
“Are you worried because you find it so hard to believe? Don’t be surprised at the difficulty of faith, if there is some part of your life where you are consciously resisting or disobeying the commandment of Jesus. Is there some part of your life which you are refusing to surrender at his behest, some sinful passion, maybe, or some animosity, some hope, perhaps your ambition or your reason? If so, you must not be surprised that you have not received the Holy Spirit, that prayer is difficult, or that your request for faith remains unanswered...The person who disobeys cannot believe. Only if you obey can you believe.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
"God offers life, but not an improved old life. The life He offers is life out of death. It stands always on the far side of the cross. Among the plastic saints of our times Jesus has to do all the dying and all we want is to hear another sermon about His dying. We want to be saved but we insist that Christ do all the dying. No cross for us, no dethronement, no dying. We remain king ... and wear our tinsel crown with all the pride of a Caesar; but we doom ourselves to shadows and weakness and spiritual sterility.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the fellowship must enter every day”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“It matters little what form of prayer we adopt or how many words we use. What matters is the faith which lays hold on God, knowing that He knows our needs before we even ask Him. That is what gives Christian prayer its boundless confidence and its joyous certainty.”
–Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
–Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The followers of Jesus have been called to peace. When he called them they found their peace, for he is their peace. But now they are told that they must not only have peace but make it. And to that end they renounce all violence and tumult.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
“The renewal of the earth begins at Golgotha, where the meek One died, and from thence it will spread. When the kingdom finally comes, the meek shall possess the earth.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Source: The Cost of Discipleship
“Who is pure of heart? Only those who have surrendered their hearts completely to Jesus that he may reign in them alone. Only those whose hearts are undefiled by their own evil—and by their own virtues too”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
“Jesus demands nothing from us without giving us the strength to comply. Jesus’ commandment never wishes to destroy life, but rather to preserve, strengthen, and heal life.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
“God does not give us everything we want, but he does fulfil all his promises, i.e. he still remains Lord of the earth and still preserves his Church, constantly renewing our faith and not laying on us more than we can bear, gladdening us with his nearness and help, hearing our prayers and leading us along the best and straightest road to himself. In this way, God creates in us praise for himself.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“One thing is certain: we must always live close to the presence of God, for that is newness of life; and then nothing is impossible for all things are possible with God”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross," he wrote. "He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. [The Bible] ... makes quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering. ... The Bible directs man to God's powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“We are entering a new year. Many human plans and mistakes, much animosity and misery will determine our path. Yet as long as we remain with Jesus and walk with him, we may be assured that nothing can happen to us that God has not foreseen, willed, and promised beforehand. The consolation of a life that is lived with Jesus is that of this life, too, it will be said: It was fulfilled what the Lord has spoken. Amen.”
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Thrown in prison for his complicity in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled between postures of faith and despair, such that he began to wonder what his true position was. To a lifelong friend, he admitted the struggle between knowing that God was there and grieving the uncertainty of what God was doing. “And finally, I must begin to tell you that, despite all I have written in my letters, it is disgusting here. My gruesome experiences often follow me into the darkness of the night, and I can only combat them by repeating innumerable hymns… You write to encourage and say that I ‘bear it all so well.’ I ask myself often who I really am. Am I the man who squirms under these ghastly conditions and cries out with complaints or am I the man who disciplines himself to appear outwardly unaffected by these things? And perhaps persuades himself that he is at peace, content, and in control of himself. Is he playing a part as in a stage play, or not? What does this ‘posture’ really mean?”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 161-162.
“We are entering a new year. Many human plans and mistakes, much animosity and misery will determine our path. Yet as long as we remain with Jesus and walk with him, we may be assured that nothing can happen to us that God has not foreseen, willed, and promised beforehand. The consolation of a life that is lived with Jesus is that of this life, too, it will be said: It was fulfilled what the Lord has spoken. Amen.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“There is a certain inclination in human nature to keep off from all problems that might make us feel uncomfortable in our own situation.“
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, London, 1934
What is the “extraordinary”? It is the love of Jesus Christ himself, who goes to the cross in suffering and obedience. It is the cross. What is unique in Christianity is the cross.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 1937
“I believe that nothing meaningless has happened to me and also that it is good for us when things run counter to our desires. I see a purpose in my present existence and only hope that I fulfill it.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“There is a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the other person has to say. It is an impatient, inattentive listening, that despises the brother and is only waiting for a chance to speak and thus get rid of the other person. This is no fulfillment of our obligation, and it is certain that here too our attitude toward our brother only reflects our relationship to God.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Bearing the cross does not bring misery and despair. Rather, it provides refreshment and peace for our souls; it is our greatest joy. Here we are no longer laden with self-made laws and burdens, but with the yoke of him who knows us and who himself goes with us under the same yoke. Under his yoke we are assured of nearness and communion. It is he himself who disciples find when they take up their cross.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer DBWE 4:91.
“Christ’s vicarious deeds and particularly his death on our behalf, become in turn the principle and model of self-sacrifice that makes community possible…The church is the church only when it exists for others.”
-Dietrich Bonhoffer, A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Whoever enters discipleship enters Jesus’ death, and puts his or her own life into death; this has been so from the beginning. The cross is not the horrible end of a pious, happy life, but stands rather at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Bread and Wine
“Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
“Who is able to withstand evil? Only those whose final standard is not their own reason, principles, conscience, freedom, or virtue, but who are ready to sacrifice all this when called to obedient and responsible actions in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God – people who try to make their whole life an answer to the question and call of God.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Widerstand und Ergebung
In confession the break-through to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the Gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin must be brought into the light. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a hard struggle until the sin is openly admitted. But God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron (Ps. 107:16).
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Whoever enters discipleship enters Jesus’ death, and puts his or her own life into death; this has been so from the beginning. The cross is not the horrible end of a pious, happy life, but stands rather at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won where the way leads to the cross.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
Are you worried because you find it so hard to believe? Don’t be surprised at the difficulty of faith, if there is some part of your life where you are consciously resisting or disobeying the commandment of Jesus. Is there some part of your life which you are refusing to surrender at his behest, some sinful passion, maybe, or some animosity, some hope, perhaps your ambition or your reason? If so, you must not be surprised that you have not received the Holy Spirit, that prayer is difficult, or that your request for faith remains unanswered....The person who disobeys cannot believe. Only if you obey can you believe.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
“Like ravens we have gathered around the carcass of cheap grace. From it we have imbibed the poison that has killed the following of Jesus among us.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
The poet Stifter once said, “Pain is a holy angel, who shows treasures to people which would otherwise remain forever hidden; through him people have become greater than through all the joys of the world.” It must be so and I tell myself this in my present situation over and over again. The pain of suffering and of longing, which can often be felt even physically, must be there, and we cannot and need not talk it away. But it needs to be overcome every time, and thus there is an even holier angel than the one of pain; that is, the one of joy in God.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Martyred Christians: 160 Readings
“A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. As long as I am by myself in the confession of my sins everything remains in the dark, but in the presence of a brother the sin has to be brought into the light. “
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Our brother… has been given to us to help us. He hears the confession of our sins in Christ’s stead and he forgives our sins in Christ’s name. He keeps the secret of our confession as God keeps it. When I go to my brother to confess, I am going to God.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Only the obedient believe. If we are to believe, we must obey a concrete command. Without this preliminary step of obedience, our faith will only be pious humbug, and lead us to the grace which is not costly. Everything depends on the first step. It has a unique quality of its own. The first step of obedience makes Peter leave his nets, and later get out of the ship; it calls upon the young man to leave his riches. Only this new existence, created through obedience, can make faith possible.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: The Cost of Discipleship
“The richness of God’s Word ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“…the psalms teach us to pray as a fellowship. The Body of Christ is praying, and as an individual one acknowledges that his prayer is only a minute fragment of the whole prayer of the Church. He learns to pray the prayer of the Body of Christ. and that lifts him above his personal concerns and allows him to pray selflessly.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Source: Life Together, 48-49.
“The Psalter is the great school of prayer…It means praying according to the Word of God, on the basis of promise. Christian prayer takes its stand on the solid ground of promises of the revealed Word and has nothing to do with vague, self-seeking vagaries.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Source: Life Together, 47.
“But every common devotion should include the word of Scripture, the hymns of the Church, and the prayer of the fellowship.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Source: Life Together, 44.
“With remarkable frequency the Scriptures remind us that the men of God rose early to seek God and carry out His commands, as did Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Joshua (cf. Gen.19.27, 22.3; Ex.9.13, 24.4; Josh.3.1, 6.12, etc.). The Gospel, which never speaks a superfluous word, says of Jesus himself: “And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed” (Mark 1.35). Some rise early because of restlessness and worry; the Scriptures call this unprofitable: “It is vain for you to rise early… to eat the bread of sorrows” (Ps. 127.2). But there is such a thing as rising early for the love of God. This was the practice of the men of the Bible.“
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Source: Life Together, 43-44.
“The first thing to remember is not to get impatient with yourself. Do not cramp yourself in despair at the wandering of your thoughts. Just sit down each day and wait patiently. If your thoughts keep running away, do not attempt to restrict them. It is no bother to let them run on to their destination; then, however, take up the place or the person to whom they have strayed into your prayers. In this way you will find yourself back to the text, and the minutes of such digressions will not be wasted and will not trouble you.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The church today is that community of people which is gripped by the power of the grace of Christ so that, recognizing as guilt towards Jesus Christ both its personal sin and the apostasy of the Western world from Jesus Christ, it confesses this guilt and accepts the burden of it. It is [in the church] that Jesus realizes his form in the midst of the world. That is why the church alone can be the place of personal and collective rebirth and renewal.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer Source: Ethics
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