Discipleship (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works)

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Striving for the righteousness of Christ stands ahead of the cares of our lives for food and clothing, or for job and family.

How could they suffer need who in hunger and nakedness, persecution and danger are confident of their community with Jesus Christ?

separated from the community to which they had previously belonged and bound solely to Jesus.

The gap which divides them from others, as the just from the unjust, even divides them from Jesus.

But love does not allot time and space to do that. For those who love, other people can never become an object for spectators to observe.

Love for a sinner, if misunderstood, is frightfully close to love for the sin.

But Jesus Christ is not a standard by which I can measure others. It is he who judges me and reveals what according to my own judgment is good to be thoroughly evil.

They thereby become only an occasion for that forgiveness and unconditional love Jesus gives me.

Judging others makes us blind, but love gives us sight. When I judge, I am blind to my own evil and to the grace granted the other person.

I claim an exceptional right in that I say: forgiveness applies to me, but condemnation applies to the other person. Judgment as arrogation of false justice about one’s neighbor is totally forbidden to the disciples. They did not receive special rights for themselves from Jesus, which they ought to claim before others. All they receive is communion with him.

Squandering cheap grace disgusts the world. Then the world will turn violently on those who want to force on it what it does not desire. This signifies for the disciples a serious limitation on their work. It agrees with the directive in Matthew 10 to shake from their feet the dust of any place that does not hear the word of peace.

Disciples may retreat, or even flee, as long as they are retreating and fleeing with the Word, as long as their weakness is the weakness of the Word itself, as long as they do not abandon the Word in their flight. They are nothing but servants and tools of the Word, and should not want to be strong when the Word is weak.

But when the Word is misused, it will turn against them.

They are told that no other way leads to their neighbor except prayer to God. Judgment and forgiveness remain in God’s hand. God holds the key. Disciples are to request, seek, knock, and God will hear them. Disciples should know that their worry and concern about others must lead them to prayer. The promise given to their prayer is the greatest power they have.

the disciples do not possess any special right or power of their own. They live completely out of the power of communion with Jesus Christ. Jesus gives the disciples a simple rule, by which even the most simpleminded can evaluate whether their dealings with others are right or wrong: they need only reverse the I and the You in the relationship.

There is one judgment, one law, one grace.

bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.

That must suffice for them.

to prefer suffering injustice to doing ill—that is a narrow road. To perceive other people as being weak and wrong, but never to judge them; to proclaim the good news to them, but never to throw pearls before swine—that is a narrow road.

If I look at the danger in what I am doing, if I look at the path instead of at him who is walking ahead of me, then my foot is already slipping. He himself is the way. He is the narrow road and the narrow gate. The only thing that matters is finding him. If we know that, then we will walk the narrow way to life through the narrow gate of the cross of Jesus Christ, then the narrowness of the way itself will reassure us.

Peter walking on water "ye of little faith"

He is among us, not because faith in Jesus Christ brought him to us, but because the devil drives him into the faith community.

No one can see into another’s heart. So he can deceive many a person to stray from the right way. Perhaps he does not even know all this, perhaps the devil who is driving him has concealed from him the truth about himself.

loveless condemnation to become the fate of every sister or brother who sins.

We should wait until the tree bears its fruit.

Jesus tells us that people cannot live for long under the cover of appearances. The time to bear fruit will come, the time of open difference will come.

People's true colors are revealed during hardships.

It can happen at any moment that pseudo-Christians are torn out of our midst, or that we ourselves are revealed as pseudo-Christians.

All its grandeur will not save it.

the doer[s]” are those who are humble in their obedient deeds. The former justify themselves by their confession; the latter, the doers, are the people who obediently trust in God’s grace.

The grace of Jesus calls the doers: their deeds become genuine humility, genuine faith, genuine confession of the grace of the One who calls.

demonic faith, which claims allegiance to him and which does wonderful deeds, to the point that they are indistinguishable from the deeds of true disciples of Jesus.

and yet deny Jesus and discipleship.

Those following Jesus must ask what is the ultimate standard of measure of who will be accepted by Jesus and who will not. Who remains and who does not? Jesus’ answer to those who are rejected at the end says it all: “I never knew you.” That is the final secret, which has been kept from the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount up until its end.

His word is his grace.

for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes”

simply go and obey.

instead, we are simply to begin acting.

Then a storm can sweep over the house, but it cannot tear apart the unity with Jesus created by his word.

There is no such thing as intending to act and not doing it.

inaction.

and I will learn that in truth I never really had faith. I did not have the word of Christ. Instead, I had a word I wrested away from him and made my own by reflecting on it, but not doing it. Then my house falls down with a great fall, because it does not rest on the word of Christ.

‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest’”

belonged to the poor and sick, wherever he found them among his people.

sheep lying on the ground.

Good shepherds fight for their flock against the wolf and do not flee.

“The harvest is great!” It is ripe to be brought into the barns. The hour has come that these poor and miserable people are brought home into the kingdom of God. Jesus sees God’s promise dawning over the masses of people.

gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.

makes them into “apostles,” into his messengers and coworkers.

has to be a power which is greater than the power of the one who rules on earth, the devil.

The devil must be pulled into the light and defeated by the power of Christ. In this, the disciples come to stand by Jesus Christ himself.

There are twelve messengers, who are to complete the work of Christ among them.