In Memorium: Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Part 2)

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed on April 9, 1945 at the Flossenburg concentration camp. His message is as relevant today as it was sixty years ago. These are excerpts from The Cost of Discipleship:

Chapter 2

[And as he passed by he saw Levi, the son of Alpheus, sitting at the place of toll, and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose and followed him. Mark 2:14]

This encounter is a testimony to the absolute, direct, and unaccountable authority of Jesus... According to our text, there is no road to faith or discipleship, no other road - only obedience to the call of Jesus.

Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. It remains an abstract idea . . . In such a religion there is trust in God, but no following of Christ... Discipleship without Jesus Christ is a way of our own choosing.

The road to faith passes through obedience to the call of Jesus. Unless a definite step is demanded the call vanishes into thin air, and if men imagine that they can follow Jesus without taking this step, they are deluding themselves like fanatics.

For faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it, and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience.

Are you worried because you find it so hard to believe? No one should be surprised at the difficulty of faith, if there is some part of his life where he is 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 Sprit, that prayer is difficult, or that your request for faith remains unanswered. Go rather and be reconciled with your brother, renounce the sin which holds you fast - and then you will recover your faith! If you dismiss the word of God’s command, you will not receive his word of grace. How can you hope to enter into communion with him when at some point in your life you are running away from him?

Only the devil has an answer for our moral difficulties, and he says: "Keep on posing problems, and you will escape the necessity of obedience."

Chapter 4

To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us... Only when we have become completely oblivious of self are we ready to bear the cross for his sake.

It is not suffering per se but suffering-and-rejection, and rejection for any cause or conviction of our own, but rejection for the sake of Christ. If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity, as one of the trials and tribulations of life. We have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering.

Jesus’ summons to the rich young man was calling him to die, because only the man who is dead to his own will can follow Christ. In fact every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts... But there is another kind of suffering and shame which the Christian is not spared. While it is true that only the sufferings of Christ are a means of atonement, yet since he has suffered for and borne the sins of the whole world and shares with his disciples the fruits of his passion, the Christian also has to undergo temptation, he too has to bear the sins of others; he too must bear their shame and be driven like a scapegoat from the gate of the city... The passion of Christ strengthens him to overcome the sins of others by forgiving them. He becomes the bearer of other men’s burden - "Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ" (Gal 6:2)... My brother’s burden which I must bear is not only his outward lot, his natural characteristics and gifts, but quite literally his sin. And the only way to bear that sin is by forgiving it in the power of the cross of Christ in which I now share. Thus the call to follow Christ always means a call to share the work of forgiving men their sins. Forgiveness is the Christlike suffering which it is the Christian’s duty to bear.

Chapter 5

[Jesus Christ] stands between us and God, and for that very reason he stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality. Since the whole world was created through him and unto him (Jn 1:3, 1 Cor 8:6, Heb 1:2), he is the sole Mediator in the world.

Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our neighbors through him. That is why intercession is the most promising way to reach our neighbors, and corporate prayer, offered in the name of Christ, the purest form of fellowship.

Posted by Greg Griffith at April 18, 2005 06:21 PM (GMT -6:00)