Near to the Lowly

Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas

Brothers of All

And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Henceforth, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all that bears a human form. Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race. By being partakers of Christ incarnate, we are partakers in the whole humanity which he bore. We now know that we have been taken up and borne in the humanity of Jesus, and therefore that new nature we now enjoy means that we too must bear the sins and sorrows of others. The incarnate Lord makes his followers the brothers of all mankind.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Start the Day Right

From @AnnVoscamp

All Together Now....

"The only way to understand the Psalms is on your knees, the whole congregation praying (singing) the words of the Psalms with all it’s strength. "

              - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

HT:Desiring God

Some Bonhoeffer Quotes

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is on of the great Christian heroes of the 20th century. Relevant Magazine posted these 12 Bonhoeffer quotes  that show, in part, why that is so, and are sure to give you some food for thought:

“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.”

“Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.”

"Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”

― The Cost of Discipleship

“In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.”

―Letters and Papers from Prison

“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.”

"Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic. Do not defend God's word, but testify to it. Trust to the Word. It is a ship loaded to the very limits of its capacity."

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”
“When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.”

"The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists of listening to them. Just as love of God begins with listening to his word, so the beginning of love for our brothers and sisters is learning to listen to them." —Life Together

“A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol”

"God does not love some ideal person, but rather human beings just as we are, not some ideal world, but rather the real world."“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 when the way leads to the cross.”

— Meditations on the Cross

Read more at http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/books/12-essential-bonhoeffer-quotes#I1fUrbtEPFADoQOr.99

Between Extremes of Solitude and Community

Wisdom from Bonhoeffer on Solitude and community:

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community.

He will only do harm to himself and to the community. Alone you stood before God when he called you; alone you had to answer that call; alone you had to struggle and pray; and alone you will die and given an account to God. You cannot escape from yourself; for God has singled you out. If you refused to be alone you are rejecting God’s call to you, and you can have no part in the community of those who are called. “The challenge of death comes to us all, and no one can die for another. Everyone must fight his own battle with death by himself, alone. . . . I will not be with you then, nor you with me” (Luther).

But the reverse is also true: Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.

Into the community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray. You are not alone, even in death, and on the Last Day you will be only one member of the great congregation of Jesus Christ. If you scorn the fellowship of the brethren, you reject the call of Jesus Christ, and thus your solitude can only be hurtful to you. “If I die, then I am not alone in death; if I suffer, they [the fellowship] suffer with me” (Luther).

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together   (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), 77 [italics and ellipses original].

HT: Justin Taylor

Correctly Celebrating Christmas

Hat Tip: Peter Cockrell

Do You Feel the Shiver?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Watch For The Light: Readings For Advent And Christmas:

We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.

Only Love Remains

Some wisdom from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

There will be just one thing in the end, and that is the love that was in our thoughts, worries, wishes, and hopes. Everything else ends and passes away—everything we did not think, and long for, out of love. All thoughts, all knowledge, all talk that has not love comes to an end—only love never ends.

Now if we are aware that something will come to an end, then it is probably not even worth starting. Life is too short and too serious for us to have time to waste, to spend on things that will only come to an end. Now and then we realize this for ourselves with shattering clarity. On New Year's or on our birthday, when we look back at what we have done during the past year or in the period of our lives just past, we are sometimes horrified to see that we have done nothing of lasting value. All our worries and efforts, all the things we have thought and said, have long since died away to nothing. Nothing is left—except perhaps an act of love, a loving thought, a hope for someone else, which may have occurred almost by chance, perhaps without our even being aware of it.

Where this is leading is clear: everything, all our knowledge, insight, thinking, and talking should in the end move toward and turn into love. For only what we think because of love, and in love, will remain, will never end.

Why must everything else come to an end, and why does only love never end? Because only in love does a person let go of himself or herself and give up his or her will, for the other person's benefit. Because love alone comes not from my own self but from another self, from God's self. Because it is through love alone that God acts through us—whereas in everything else it is we ourselves who are at work; it is our thoughts, our speaking, our knowledge—but it is God's love. And what is ours comes to an end, all of it—but what is of God remains. Because love is God's very self and God's will; that is why it never ends, it never doubts, it stays its course …. It goes out to enemies as well as to friends, and it never abandons anyone, even when it is abandoned by everyone. Love follows after its beloved through guilt and disgrace and loneliness, all of which are no part of it; it is simply there and never ends. And it blesses every place it enters. Everywhere it goes, it finds imperfection and bears witness to perfection.

- From, The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer


Hat Tip: Vitamin Z

Dare to Be a Sinner

"In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner."

      - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Waiting for the Door to Be Opened

"A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes... and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent."

              - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

(Written while he was a prisoner of Hitler and the Nazis, awaiting execution)

Feel the Shiver

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Watch For The Light: Readings For Advent And Christmas:

We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.

Come and Die

From a challenging article by Dane Ortland at The Resurgence:

Jesus’ secret to joy and life was simple: Die.

“If anyone would come after me,” he said, “let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:34–35).

Against what all our instincts of self-preservation whisper to us every day, total surrender to Jesus is the safest investment we can make.

For disciples of Jesus, the gospel of grace not only plucks them from the easy path to hell but also places them on the hard path to heaven. “When Christ calls a man,” wrote the German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “he bids him come and die.”

That’s more than a cute tweet.

  Read the whole thing at the link.

Jesus Doesn't Want You to Be a Good Person

"Jesus doesn't want you to be a good person.

When he calls you to follow him, he isn't asking you to become nice and do your best at helping others.  He didn't die so you can feel good about the things you've screwed-up or so you could carry a sentimental hope of being re-united beyond the grave with the people you love but who have died.

His call is a command for you to comprehensively and absolutely walk away from the way you do life now so you can follow him down an exclusive path through the narrow gate that leads to the kingdom of heaven....

...Like a frog in kettle, we do not see that when our relationship with Jesus is replaced by rules, the rules then take on an inordinate and unnatural heaviness.  We end up making the rules the main thing when the main thing has always been Jesus...

...The sooner you understand this and stop trying to impress Jesus, the sooner you can follow Jesus into the realm of costly grace."

- Jon Walker, Costly Grace: A Contemporary View o Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, pages 35-36, (italics in the original)

Sin Boldly: Believe More Boldly Still

"Sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ more boldly still."  - Martin Luther

"...Luther's point then, was when we sin we need not despair. Jesus covers all of our sins.  He died for the sins you've already committed and he died for the sins you will commit tomorrow. Luther means we can stop being afraid of ourselves; stop being afraid that we may make mistakes.  Just love God and live your life - and when you stumble, fall into the grace of Jesus Christ.

By trusting the grace of God, we can be courageous in following Jesus an equally courageous in confessing our sins before hi.  There is no need to hide our sins or to posture as if we have not sinned. We can just admit it and keep on following Jesus, even if we have to confess sins to Jesus every day."

              - Jon Walker, Costly Grace, Page 27

Costly Grace

"Costly grace justifies the sinner: Go and sin no more.  Cheap grace justifies the sin: Everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are."

Jon Walker, Costly Grace, page 25

He is Our Textbook

"...Discipleship means we are inseparably bonded to Jesus.  Without him, there can be no discipleship: he is the curriculum we study: he is the Word we believe: and he is the Way we live. 'Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly,' Jesus says (Matthew 11:30 MSG).

Jesus is our textbook on how to live connected to God, how to make decisions with the mind of Christ, and how to act on promptings from the Spirit rather than self-impulse.  The more intimate we become with Jesus, the more successful we will be at becoming like him."

Jon Walker, Costly Grace: A Contemporary View of Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, page 19

Who - Not What or How

"Jesus calls us away from the hows and whys and whats into the rhythms of grace, standing before us as the Son of God Incarnate, Jesus, God's Word in the flesh.  The answer to our frustrations is 'who,' not 'what' or 'how.'

The Word of God who stands before us is not a problem to be solved, but a person to know; when we try to relate to him as a 'how' or 'what,' we end up in the never-ending cycle of trying harder to fit into an equation that God never meant for us to solve."

Jon Walker, Costly Grace: a Contemporary View of Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, pages 17-18,

The Cost of Discipleship Retold

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship has long been considered a classic, if not the classic, work on discipleship, following Jesus, and costly grace. It was written in German just before World War II, but became popular when translated into English after the author's death at the hands of  Hitler and the Nazis.

I first read it when I was in high school.  It is an astounding book.  However, as the concepts are sometimes difficult, and as it is a translation from thoughts and words first expressed in a foreign language and culture, it can be hard for many Americans to read and understand. I include myself in that group.

Jon Walker has done us all a great favor by publishing Costly Grace: A Contemporary View of Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. This book is not a re-translation of Bonhoeffer.  It is a retelling of the concepts and idea of his book, following the same structure, yet written in contemporary English. This makes it easier for us to understand. I do not say, however, that it makes it easier to digest and process. Easier to understand, but still as hard to process as is Jesus' call to take up the cross and follow him.  He still says "Come and Die."

Over the next several days I will be posting quotes from the book.  Decide for yourself.  Come and follow!

Grace Over Legalism, Truth Over License

More from Costly Grace:

"If I am full of grace, there is no excuse for legalism in my life (Matthew 23:4; 11:28-30).

If I am full of truth, there is no excuse for unrestraint (licentiousness) either (Matthew 5:17-20; John 8:11).

The only reason to live legalistically or licentiously is unbelief in the adequacy of the indwelling Lord Jesus Christ who freely supplies grace and truth for my every need. Or an unwillingness to let him be himself - full of grace and truth - through me.

We must go to Jesus not only to learn how to live, but to receive the life from which we live - his life place in us to create in us the righteousness of God and the characteristics of Christ.  The essence of discipleship, then, is to know Christ at a level of intimacy that can only be sustained by his constant presence in our lives."

Jon Walker, Costly Grace: A Contemporaries View of Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, page 21