Discipleship (Works, Vol 4)

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Christ’s kingdom is a realm of peace, and those in Christ’s community greet each other with a greeting of peace. Jesus’ disciples maintain peace by choosing to suffer instead of causing others to suffer. They preserve community when others destroy it. They renounce self-assertion and are silent in the face of hatred and injustice. That is how they overcome evil with good.[41]

Any community of Jesus which wants to be invisible is no longer a community that follows him.

Jesus validates anew the law as God’s law. God is the giver and Lord of the law, and it is fulfilled only in personal communion with God. There is no fulfillment of the law without communion with God; there is also no communion with God without fulfillment of the law. The first refers to the Jews; the second refers to the misunderstanding that threatened the disciples.

How does love become unconquerable? By never asking what the enemy is doing to it, and only asking what Jesus has done.

The concept of discipleship itself provides the resolution. It is exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ. Disciples always look only to their Lord and follow him.

You should not know your own goodness.[170] Otherwise it will really be your goodness, and not the goodness of Christ.

The genuine deed of love is always a deed hidden to myself.[171]

We pray to God, in whom we believe through Christ. Therefore our prayer can never be a pleading with God. We do not need to pose before God. We may trust that God knows what we need before we ask for it.[177] This gives our prayer greatest confidence and joyous certainty. It is not the formulation, not the number of words, but faith which reaches God’s fatherly heart that has known us so long.

The life of those who follow proves to be on the right course when nothing comes between them and Christ, not the law, not their own piety, and not the world.

The disciples always see only Christ. They do not see Christ and the law, Christ and piety, Christ and the world. They do not even begin to reflect that; they just follow Christ in everything.

The heart clings to collected treasure. Stored-up possessions get between me and God.

everything which keeps you from loving God above all things,[203] everything which gets between you and your obedience to Jesus is the treasure to which your heart clings.

Worry is the concern of nonbelievers, who rely on their strength and work, but not on God. Nonbelievers are worriers, because they do not know that the Father knows what their needs are.[210]

From the human point of view there are countless possibilities of understanding and interpreting the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus knows only one possibility: simply go and obey. Do not interpret or apply, but do it and obey. That is the only way Jesus’ word is really heard. But again, doing something is not to be understood as an ideal possibility; instead, we are simply to begin acting.[240]