The Cost of Discipleship

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We are therefore confronted with a paradox. Our activity must be visible, but never be done for the sake of making it visible.

The genuine work of love is always a hidden work. Take heed therefore that you know it not, for only so is it the goodness of God. If we want to know our own goodness or love, it has already ceased to be love.

If the left hand knows what the right hand is doing, if we become conscious of our hidden virtue, we are forging our own reward, instead of that which God had intended to give us in his own good time. But if we are content to carry on with our life hidden from our eyes, we shall receive our reward openly from God.

Because love is hidden it cannot be a visible virtue or a habit which can be acquired. Take heed, it says, that you do not exchange true love for an amiable virtuousness, a human “quality.” Genuine love is always self-forgetful in the true sense of the word. But if we are to have it, our old man must die with all his virtues and qualities, and this can only be done where the disciple forgets self and clings solely to Christ.

So the Christian needs to observe a strict exterior discipline. But we are not to imagine that that alone will crush the will of the flesh, or that there is any way of mortifying our old man other than by faith in Jesus. The real difference in the believer who follows Christ and has mortified his will and died after the old man in Christ, is that he is more clearly aware than other men of the rebelliousness and perennial pride of the flesh, he is conscious of his sloth and self-indulgence and knows that his arrogance must be eradicated. Hence there is a need for daily self-discipline.

How is it possible to live the life of faith when we grow weary of prayer, when we lose our taste for reading the Bible, and when sleep, food and sensuality deprive us of the joy of communion with God?

THE LIFE of discipleship can only be maintained so long as nothing is allowed to come between Christ and ourselves—neither the law, nor personal piety, nor even the world.

And if we ask how we are to know where our hearts are, the answer is just as simple—everything which hinders us from loving God above all things and acts as a barrier between ourselves and our obedience to Jesus is our treasure, and the place where our heart is.

“Be not anxious for the morrow.” This is not to be taken as a philosophy of life or a moral law: it is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and only so can it be understood. Only those who follow him and know him can receive this word as a promise of the love of his Father and as a deliverance from the thraldom of material things. It is not care that frees the disciples from care, but their faith in Jesus Christ.

Anxiety is characteristic of the Gentiles, for they rely on their own strength and work instead of relying on God. They do not know that the Father knows that we have need of all these things, and so they try to do for themselves what they do not expect from God.

The Word recognizes opposition when it meets it, and is prepared to suffer it. It is a hard lesson, but a true one, that the gospel, unlike an ideology, reckons with impossibilities. The Word is weaker than any ideology, and this means that with only the gospel at their command the witnesses are weaker than the propagandists of an opinion. But although they are weak, they are ready to suffer with the Word and so are free from that morbid restlessness which is so characteristic of fanaticism.

To try and force the Word on the world by hook or by crook is to make the living Word of God into a mere idea, and the world would be perfectly justified in refusing to listen to an idea for which it had no use.

St Paul says: “No man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit” (I Cor. 12.3). It is impossible to surrender our lives to Jesus or call him Lord of our own free will. St Paul is deliberately reckoning with the possibility that men may call Jesus Lord without the Holy Spirit, that is, without having received the call.

At this point Jesus reveals to his disciples the possibility of a demonic faith which produces wonderful works quite indistinguishable from the works of the true disciples, works of charity, miracles, perhaps even of personal sanctification, but which is nevertheless a denial of Jesus and of the life of discipleship. This is just what St Paul means in I Cor. 13, when he says that it is possible to preach, to prophesy, to have all knowledge, and even faith so as to remove mountains, and all this without love, that is to say, without Christ, without the Holy Spirit. More than this, St Paul must even reckon with the possibility that the very works of Christian charity, giving away one’s goods, and even martyrdom, may be done without love, without Christ, without the Holy Spirit. Without love: that is to say, in all this activity the activity of discipleship is absent, namely that activity the doer of which is in the last resort none other than Jesus Christ himself.

Humanly speaking, we could understand and interpret the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience, not interpreting it or applying it, but doing and obeying it. That is the only way to hear his word. But again he does not mean that it is to be discussed as an ideal, he really means us to get on with it.

To tell men that the cause is urgent, and that the kingdom of God is at hand is the most charitable and merciful act we can perform, the most joyous news we can bring.

When they had recognized the Christ, they were immediately given a simple and direct command from his very lips, telling them exactly what to do. But just at this crucial point of Christan obedience we are given no help whatever. Does not Christ speak to us differently now? If that were true, we should certainly be in a hopeless predicament. But it is far from true. Christ speaks to us exactly as he spoke to them. It was not as though they first recognized him as the Christ and then received his command. They believed his word and command and recognized him as the Christ—in that order. There was no other way for them to know Christ, but by his plain word. And therefore the converse is also true—we cannot know Jesus without at the same time knowing his will. So

The scriptures do not present us with a series of Christian types to be imitated according to choice: they preach to us in every situation the one Jesus Christ. To him alone must I listen. He is everywhere one and the same.

The Body of Christ is in the strictest sense of the word “for us” as it hangs on the cross, and “for us” as it is given to us in the Word, in baptism and in the Lord’s Supper. This is the ground of all bodily fellowship with Jesus Christ.

Since the ascension, Christ’s place on earth has been taken by his Body, the Church. The Church is the real presence of Christ. Once we have realized this truth we are well on the way to recovering an aspect of the Church’s being which has been sadly neglected in the past. We should think of the Church not as an institution but as a person, though of course a person in a unique sense.

But preaching is not the only means whereby the Church takes visible form. That is also done by the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, both of which flow from the true humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper belong to the fellowship of the Body of Christ alone, whereas the Word is intended not only for believers but also for unbelievers. The sacraments belong exclusively to the Church. Hence the congregation is in a true sense a baptismal and eucharistic congregation, and only secondarily a preaching congregation.

It is instructive to note that the fellowship is mentioned between Word and Sacrament. This is no accident, for fellowship always springs from the Word and finds its goal and completion in the Lord’s Supper. The whole common life of the Christian fellowship oscillates between Word and Sacrament, it begins and ends in worship.

This visible Church, with its perfect common life, invades the world and robs it of its children. The daily growth of the Church is a proof of the power of the Lord who dwells in it.

On the contrary, baptism confers the privilege of participation in all the activities of the Body of Christ in every department of life.

The member of the Body of Christ has been delivered from the world and called out of it. He must give the world a visible proof of his calling, not only by sharing in the Church’s worship and discipline, but also through the new fellowship of brotherly living. If the world despises one of the brethren, the Christian will love and serve him. If the world does him violence, the Christian will succour and comfort him. If the world dishonours and insults him, the Christian will sacrifice his own honour to cover his brother’s shame. Where the world seeks gain, the Christian will renounce it. Where the world exploits, he will dispossess himself, and where the world oppresses, he will stoop down and raise up the oppressed. If the world refuses justice, the Christian will pursue mercy, and if the world takes refuge in lies, he will open his mouth for the dumb, and bear testimony to the truth. For the sake of the brother, be he Jew or Greek, bond or free, strong or weak, noble or base, he will renounce all fellowship with the world. For the Christian serves the fellowship of the Body of Christ, and he cannot hide it from the world. He is called out of the world to follow Christ.

Let the Christian remain in the world, not because of the good gifts of creation, nor because of his responsibility for the course of the world, but for the sake of the Body of the incarnate Christ and for the sake of the Church. Let him remain in the world to engage in frontal assault on it, and let him live the life of his secular calling in order to show himself as a stranger in this world all the more. But that is only possible if we are visible members of the Church. The antithesis between the world and the Church must be borne out in the world. That was the purpose of the incarnation. That is why Christ died among his enemies. That is the reason and the only reason why the slave must remain a slave and the Christian remain subject to the powers that be.

But it is not always the world which ejects the Christian from his secular calling. Even in the first century we find that certain professions were regarded as incompatible with membership of the Christian Church. The actor who had to play the part of pagan gods and heroes, the teacher who was forced to teach pagan mythologies in pagan schools, the gladiator who had to take human life for sport, the soldier who wielded the sword, the policeman and the judge, all had to renounce their heathen professions if they wanted to be baptized. Later the Church—or was it perhaps the world?—found it possible to lift the ban on these professions. More and more the offensive passes from the Church to the world.

There is a wrong way of staying in the world and a wrong way of fleeing from it. In both cases we are fashioning ourselves according to the world. But the Church of Christ has a different “form” from the world. Her task is increasingly to realize this form.

This is the deceitful arrogance and the false spirituality of the old man, who seeks sanctification outside the visible community of the brethren.

As saints they are reminded and exhorted to be what they are. But this is not an impossible ideal, it is not sinners who are required to become holy, or that would mean a return to justification by works and would be blasphemy against Christ. No, it is saints who are required to be holy, saints who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

Whoredom is a resurgence of the old Adam, the sin Adam committed when he desired to be as God, to be the creator of life, to rule rather than to serve.

In other words the preaching of forgiveness must always go hand-in-hand with the preaching of repentance, the preaching of the gospel with the preaching of the law. Nor can the forgiveness of sin be unconditional—sometimes sin must be retained.

If the Church is to walk worthily of the gospel, part of its duty will be to maintain ecclesiastical discipline. Sanctification means driving out the world from the Church as well as separating the Church from the world. But the purpose of such discipline is not to establish a community of the perfect, but a community consisting of men who really live under the forgiving mercy of God. Discipline in a congregation is a servant of the precious grace of God. If a member of the Church falls into sin, he must be admonished and punished, lest he forfeit his own salvation and the gospel be discredited.

But it is only sins that have become public which come into consideration. “Some men’s sins are evident, going before unto judgement, and some men also they follow after” (I Tim. 5.24). According to this, the man who is punished under ecclesiastical discipline will be spared the punishment of the day of judgement.

But if he will not listen to you, and remains obdurate, you must not go and make his sin public, but choose one or two witnesses (Matt. 18.15 f). These witnesses are necessary for two reasons. First they are needed to establish the fact of the sin—that is to say, if the accusation cannot be proved and is denied by the member of the congregation, leave the matter in God’s hand; the brethren are meant to be witnesses, not inquisitors! But secondly they are needed to prove the offender’s refusal to repent. The secrecy of the disciplinary action is meant to help the sinner towards repentance.

Adam became “as God” —sicut deus—in his own way. But now that he had made himself god, he no longer had a God. He ruled in solitude as a creator-god in a God-forsaken subjected world.

That Body, in which Christ had lived in the form of a servant, rose on Easter Day as a new Body, with heavenly form and radiance. But if we would have a share in that glory and radiance, we must first be conformed to the image of the Suffering Servant who was obedient to the death of the cross. If we would bear the image of his glory, we must first bear the image of his shame. There is no other way to recover the image we lost through the Fall.

In baptism the form of Christ’s death is impressed upon his own. They are dead to the flesh and to sin, they are dead to the world, and the world is dead to them (Gal. 6.14). Anybody living in the strength of Christ’s baptism lives in the strength of Christ’s death. Their life is marked by a daily dying in the war between the flesh and the spirit, and in the mortal agony the devil inflicts upon them day by day. This is the suffering of Christ which all his disciples on earth must undergo.

It is only because he became like us that we can become like him. It is only because we are identified with him that we can become like him.