Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis: Recovering the True Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

by Mark Nation

In other words, the gospel is not something merely “usable” but rather “the gospel concerns God and God’s actions, and so is known only in the miracle of revelation and faith, and present among us after the manner of God, that is, spiritually, and not as some kind of religious or ecclesiastical possession” (24). If “we lose sight of this, and convert the gospel into just another Christian cultural commodity, then it very rapidly becomes ‘something which would survive as Good News apart from faith and without God” (25). Put most simply, “the gospel is ‘the gospel of Christ.’ Jesus himself, the proclaimer and embodiment of God’s good news is the gospel” (25; emphasis his). It is important to remind ourselves that the gospel is indeed good news. It is such because “in it we encounter God’s gracious work for us and our salvation” (25). This good news originates “in God himself, it concerns his presence and action, and points human life to its true fulfillment in fellowship with God” (25). Though ultimate redemption lies in the future, “the gospel is the presence of salvation, the freeing of all things from disorder and confinement and the gift of life in fellowship with God. The gospel is the active reality of God’s grace, God taking up the cause of those whose sin has eaten away at their humanity” (26). And the gospel is good news “because it is comprehensively true. All human reality is what it is in the light of the gospel” (27). This means that the gospel is “particular be...