Discipleship (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works)

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community; it is the Lord’s Supper without confession of sin; it is absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ.

Inverted, removing divinity from the law, and separating God from God’s law would be the sinful misunderstanding of the disciples.

they did it in order to get God into their power in the salvation they possessed.

The disciples would know and understand this when he told it to them, because they knew who he was.

The disciples’ path to the law leads through the cross of Christ.

The Pharisees intended to be doers of the law.

Their righteousness was their action. The goal of their righteousness was complete conformity of their action to what was commanded in the law. Nonetheless, a remnant always remained, which had to be covered by forgiveness.

he is righteousness personified.

The disciples’ righteousness is the righteousness of Christ.

The righteousness of Christ should not just be taught, but done.

In a word, this means to follow him.

first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.

revolutionary.

Only those who perceive the law to be the word of Christ can fulfill it. He rejected the sinful misunderstanding in which the Pharisees were caught. True knowledge of the law lies solely in knowing Christ to be the Lord and the fulfiller of the law.

There is no distinction between so-called just anger and unjust anger.[6]

Contempt for others makes worship dishonest and deprives it of any divine promise.

Otherwise the most correct form of worship, the most pious prayer, and the bravest confession will not help, but will give witness against it, because it has ceased following Jesus.

service to God in worship can no longer be detached from service to sisters and brothers.

It is a difficult path Jesus imposes on his disciples. It includes much humiliation and dishonor for the disciples themselves.

humanity of the Son of God. Might the disciples of Jesus seriously contemplate that!

self-denial,

No one has greater love that those who lay down their lives for their friends. That is the love of the crucified one. Thus, this commandment is fulfilled solely in the cross of Jesus.

Our bond to Jesus Christ permits no desire without love.

disconnects us from discipleship and brings the whole body into hell.

you gain the desire of your eye or your hand for a moment, and you lose your whole body for eternity. Your eye, when it is serving impure desire, cannot see God.

Jesus does not disapprove of the body and its natural desires. But he rejects the lack of faith that is concealed in it.

Those who follow him maintain their sole allegiance to Christ even in their marriage by practicing discipline and self-denial. Christ is Lord even of the followers’ marriage. This causes the marriage of disciples to be something different than civil marriage, but, again, this is not contempt for marriage, but precisely its sanctification.

Christ is our first love.

The sight of that body, which was given for us, and our communion with it provide the disciples with the strength for the chastity which Jesus commands.

“perfect” Christians, but permitted within certain limits for weaker ones.

The oath is proof of the existence of lies in the world.

An oath consigns all other statements to the darkness of doubt.

But because Christians never control their future, a solemn promise under oath, as, for example, loyalty oaths, is fraught with greatest danger for them. For Christians control neither their own future, nor, what is more, the future of those to whom they are bound after the loyalty is sworn.

The truthfulness which Jesus requires of his disciples lies in the

self-denial which does not conceal sin.

Lying destroys community. But truth rends false community and founds genuine fellowship. There is no following Jesus without living in the truth unveiled before God and other people.

Jesus’ followers renounce their own rights for his sake.

retribution means patiently bearing the blow, so that evil is not added to evil. That is the only way community can be established and preserved.

Evil will become powerless when it finds no opposing object, no resistance, but, instead, is willingly borne and suffered.

Then evil cannot achieve its goal of creating more evil; it remains alone.

Our voluntary renunciation of counterviolence confirms and proclaims our unconditional allegiance to Jesus as his followers, our freedom, our detachment from our own egos.

Jesus calls the evil person evil.

Instead, by suffering, the disciple will bring evil to its end and thus will overcome the evil person. Suffering willingly endured is stronger than evil; it is the death of evil.

Because we live in the world and the world is evil, therefore this statement cannot be valid.

How will our preaching of the passion of Jesus Christ become visible and credible to the world if the disciples avoid this passion for themselves, if they despise it in their own bodies? Through his cross Jesus himself fulfilled the law he gives us,[7] and in his commandment he graciously keeps his disciples in communion with his cross.

Loving one’s kindred is a commandment that could be misunderstood. Loving enemies makes unmistakably clear what Jesus intends.

As a result, there will be no more wars of faith.

This love knows no difference among diverse kinds of enemies, except that the more animosity the enemy has, the more my love is required.

“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Now we are taking up their neediness and poverty, their being guilty and lost, and interceding for them before God.

however, the disciples themselves recognize that they were among the enemies of Jesus who have been conquered by his love.