The Cost of Discipleship

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The wounds and scars he receives in the fray are living tokens of this participation in the cross of his Lord.

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.

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.

Following Christ means passio passiva, suffering because we have to suffer.

Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ, and it is therefore not at all surprising that Christians should be called upon to suffer. In fact it is a joy and a token of his grace.

To bear the cross proves to be the only way of triumphing over suffering. This is true for all who follow Christ, because it was true for him.

Suffering means being cut off from God. Therefore those who live in communion with him cannot really suffer.

while it is still true that suffering means being cut off from God, yet within the fellowship of Christ’s suffering, suffering is overcome by suffering, and becomes the way to communion with God.

For God is a God who bears. The Son of God bore our flesh, he bore the cross, he bore our sins, thus making atonement for us. In the same way his followers are also called upon to bear, and that is precisely what it means to be a Christian.

He stands between us and God, and for that very reason he stands between us and all other men and things.

We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves.

Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our neighbours through him.

It is not for us to choose which way we shall follow. That depends on the will of Christ. But this at least is certain: in one way or the other we shall have to leave the immediacy of the world and become individuals, whether secretly or openly.

He means refusing to be in tune with the world or to accommodate oneself to its standards.

The world dreams of progress, of power and of the future. but the disciples meditate on the end, the last judgement, and the coming of the kingdom.

The disciple-community does not shake off sorrow as though it were no concern of its own, but willingly bears it.

When reproached, they hold their peace; when treated with violence they endure it patiently; when men drive them from their presence, they yield their ground. They will not go to law to defend their rights, or make a scene when they suffer injustice, nor do they insist on their legal rights. They are determined to leave their rights to God alone—

Jesus says: “They shall inherit the earth.” To these, the powerless and the disenfranchised, the very earth belongs. Those who now possess it by violence and injustice shall lose it, and those who here have utterly renounced it, who were meek to the point of the cross, shall rule the new earth.

when the kingdom of heaven descends, the face of the earth will be renewed, and it will belong to the flock of Jesus. God does not forsake the earth: he made it, he sent his Son to it, and on it he built his Church. Thus a beginning has already been made in this present age.

Those who follow Jesus grow hungry and thirsty on the way.

they take upon themselves the distress and humiliation and sin of others. They have an irresistible love for the down-trodden, the sick, the wretched, the wronged, the outcast and all who are tortured with anxiety. They go out and seek all who are enmeshed in the toils of sin and guilt. No distress is too great, no sin too appalling for their pity.

He was not ashamed of his disciples, he became the brother of mankind, and bore their shame unto the death of the cross. That is how Jesus, the crucified, was merciful. His followers owe their lives entirely to that mercy.

And to that end they renounce all violence and tumult. In the cause of Christ nothing is to be gained by such methods. His kingdom is one of peace, and the mutual greeting of his flock is a greeting of peace.

His disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others.

They renounce all self-assertion, and quietly suffer in the face ...

With his own hand God wipes away the tears from the eyes of those who had mourned upon earth.

The good works are poverty, peregrination, meekness, peaceableness, and finally persecution and rejection.

there is nothing for us to glorify in the disciple who bears the cross, or in the community whose light so shines because it stands visibly on the hill—only the Father which is in heaven can be praised for the “good works.” It is by seeing the cross and the community beneath it that men come to believe in God.

It was the error of Israel to put the law in God’s place, to make the law their God and their God a law.

There is no fulfilment of the law apart from communion with God, and no communion with God apart from fulfilment of the law.

It is a righteousness under the cross, it belongs only to the poor, the tempted, the hungry, the meek, the peacemakers, the persecuted—who endure their lot for the sake of Jesus;

for the follower of Jesus there can be no limit as to who is his neighbour, except as his Lord decides.

Jesus will not accept the common distinction between righteous indignation and unjustifiable anger.I

anger is an offence against both God and his neighbour.

Let us therefore as a Church examine ourselves, and see whether we have not often enough wronged our fellow-men.

To serve our brother, to please him, to allow him his due and to let him live, is the way of self-denial, the way of the cross.

When you have made your eye the instrument of impurity, you cannot see God with it.

Christian marriage is marked by discipline and self-denial. Christ is the Lord even of marriage.

Christianity does not therefore depreciate marriage, it sanctifies it.

Only those who follow Jesus and cleave to him are living in complete truthfulness.

Complete truthfulness is only possible where sin has been uncovered, and forgiven by Jesus.

When we know the cross we are no longer afraid of the truth. We need no more oaths to confirm the truth of our utterances, for we live in the perfect truth of God.

The right way to requite evil, according to Jesus, is not to resist it.

The Church is not to be a national community like the old Israel, but a community of believers without political or national ties.

The only way to overcome evil is to let it run itself to a standstill because it does not find the resistance it is looking for.

Resistance merely creates further evil and adds fuel to the flames.

By his willingly renouncing self-defence, the Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus, and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego.

The exclusiveness of this adherence is the only power which can overcome evil.

Patient endurance of evil does not mean a recognition of its rights.