Discipleship (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works)

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The tendency to pose problems for the sake of posing problems also will blossom and divert people from the clear and simple truth

Jesus’ community with his disciples was all-encompassing, extending to all areas of life.

“of one heart and soul.”

The daily growth of the church-community demonstrates the power of the Lord who dwells in its midst.

The whole breadth of human relationships among Christians is encompassed by Christ, by the church-community.

unrestricted privilege

When the Holy Spirit has spoken, but we still continue to listen to the voice of our race, our nature, or our sympathies and antipathies, we are profaning the sacrament. Baptism into the body of Christ changes not only a person’s personal status with regard to salvation, but also their relationships throughout all of life.

It gains space for Christ. For whatever is “in Christ” is no longer under the dominion of the world, of sin, or of the law.

Christians will renounce all community with the world, for they serve the community of the body of Jesus Christ. Being a part of this community, Christians cannot remain hidden from the world. They have been called out of the world and follow Christ.

“For there is no authority except from God.”

They are to take comfort from the fact that God will use the authorities as an instrument through which to work for their welfare, and that their God is Lord over the authorities.

“for rulers are not a terror to good conduct [Werk], but to bad [böse]”

???

“But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer”

Christians deserve to receive approval from the authorities!

Even if they now are being subjected to suffering instead of receiving approval, they remain free before God and free from fear, and have not brought any shame upon the church-community.

in the end it is God who rules, not the authorities, and that any authority is ultimately God’s servant. Authority as the servant of God—here speaks the same apostle who himself frequently had to suffer unjust imprisonment at the hands of this authority, who on three occasions received the cruel punishment of being flogged, and who was aware of the edict by Emperor Claudius to banish all Jews from Rome (Acts 18:1ff.).

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”

to submit to authority and to owe no one anything that is due them

That is why slaves are to remain slaves; that is why Christians are to remain subject to the governing authorities, who have power over them; that is why Christians ought not to abandon this world

Christians ought to suffer for no other reason than for being members of the body of Christ.

They are to remain in the world in order to engage the world in a frontal assault. Let them “live out their vocation in this world” in order that their “unworldliness” might become fully visible.

That is why Christ became a human being and died in the midst of his enemies.

That is why they ought to die to the world in the midst of their worldly calling. The value of the secular vocation for Christians is that it allows them to live in the world by God’s goodness and to engage more fervently in the fight against the things of this world.

By calling Christians back into the world, Luther in fact calls them to become unworldly in the true sense. This actually proved to be his own experience. Luther’s call to return into the world always was a call to become a part of the visible church-community of the incarnate Lord. And the same is also true of Paul.

They join their Lord in a visible community of suffering [Leidensgemeinschaft]. They now need even more the full fellowship and support of brothers and sisters in the church-community.

Later the church—or rather the world!—managed to give Christians permission again to take up most of these professions. Rejections were from now on more and more enacted by the world rather than the church-community.

A world that has become entirely anti-Christian, however, can no longer grant Christians even this private sphere in which they pursue their professional work and earn their daily bread.

There is a way of living in conformity with this world while being in it, but there is also a way of creating for oneself the spiritual ‘world’ of the monastery. There is an illegitimate way of remaining in the world, just as there is an illegitimate way of escaping from it.

He was not of this world. If it engages the world properly, the visible church-community will always more closely assume the form of its suffering Lord.

For what is of this world is passing away. I want you to be free from anxieties”

They do not set their heart on their possessions, and thus they remain entirely free.

their Lord. They marry; the apostle, however, thinks it is more beneficial if they remain unmarried provided this can be done in faith (1 Cor. 7:7, 33-40).

they are called not to be idle.

“Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God”

They can cope with being well fed and with going hungry, with having plenty and with being in need. “I can do all things through the one who empowers me, Christ”

In this, Christian marriage will become a parable of Christ’s self-sacrificial love for his church-community.

to prefer to be taken advantage of and to suffer injustice rather than to insist on their rights before a pagan court of law over “things that are only of temporary significance.” If it is unavoidable, they will settle their disputes within the church-community, before their own tribunals (1 Cor. 6:1-8).

The world becomes too confining; all its hopes and dreams are set on the Lord’s return. The community members still walk in the flesh. But their eyes are turned to heaven,

But it is merely passing through its host country. At any moment it may receive the signal to move on. Then it will break camp, leaving behind all worldly friends and relatives, and following only the voice of the one who has called it. It leaves the foreign country and moves onward toward its heavenly home.

They shield the world from God’s judgment of wrath. They suffer so that the world can still live under God’s forbearance. They are strangers and sojourners on this earth (Heb. 11:13; 13:14; 1 Peter 1:1). They set their minds on things that are above, not on things that are of the earth (Col. 3:2). For their true life has not yet been revealed; it is still hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3).

They are still hidden even from themselves. The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. As a visible church-community, their own identity remains completely invisible to them. They look only to their Lord. He is in heaven, and their life for which they are waiting is in him. But when Christ, their life, reveals himself, then they will also be revealed with him in glory (Col. 3:4).

God alone is holy.

What happened to him happened to all of us. He took part in our life and in our dying, and thus we came to take part in his life and his dying. If God’s righteousness required Christ’s death as its proof, then we are with Christ at the place where God’s righteousness dwells, at his cross, for he bore our flesh. As those who have been killed, we thus come to take part in God’s own righteousness in Jesus’ death.

For as human beings we cannot be made right and ready before God except in recognizing that God alone is righteous and we are sinners throughout.

“God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself”

The innocent one is killed because he bears our sinful flesh; he is being hated and cursed by God and the world; he is made sinful for the sake of our flesh. But in his death we find God’s righteousness.

then we have in him become righteousness—but this is most certainly not our own righteousness (ἰδία δικαιοσύνη, Rom. 10:3; Phil. 3:9). Rather, in a very strict sense, this is solely the righteousness of God. Thus, God’s righteousness is such that we as sinners become God’s righteousness.

Contempt for the body of Christ as the visible community of justified sinners is what is really hiding behind the apparent humility of this kind of inwardness.

It is contempt for the community, since I seek to be holy apart from other Christians. It is contempt for sinners, since in self-bestowed holiness I withdraw from my church in its sinful form. Sanctification apart from the visible church-community is mere self-proclaimed holiness.

“Those who have been born of God do not sin”