Meditations on the Cross Quotes

“To be formed and shaped by the Incarnate: That is what it means to be truly human. All efforts to be more than human, to be superhuman, all efforts to grow beyond one's humanity, all heroism, all attempts at being demigods are discarded here, for all of it is untrue. The real human being is neither an object of contempt nor of apotheosis, but rather God's love. The multiplicity of God's creative wealth is not violated here by false uniformity, by coercion of human beings under an ideal, under a type, a particular image. Real human beings are allowed in freedom to be the creatures of their creator. Being formed in the image of the Incarnate means being permitted to be the human being one really is. There is no more pretense, hypocrisy, cramped coercion to be something other than what one is, something better, something more ideal. God loves real human beings. God became a real human being.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditations on the Cross

“Formation comes about only by being drawn into the form and figure of Jesus Christ, by being formed in accordance with the singular form and figure of the Incarnate, Crucified, and Resurrected. This does not come about by exerting oneself 'to become like Jesus,' as we are used to saying, but rather by allowing the form of Jesus Christ to exert its own influence on us such that it shapes our form according to Christ's own (Gal 4:19). Christ remains the only one who forms and shapes. It is not Christians who form the world with their ideas, but rather it is Christ who shapes human beings into a likeness of his own form.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditations on the Cross

“But have we also understood that in all this God has wanted and yet wants to test us, and in all this but one question is important--namely, whether we have peace with God or whether we have hitherto lived merely in an entirely worldly peace. How much grumbling, and unwillingness, how much contradiction and hatred of suffering has come to light among us! How much denial, stepping aside, how much fear whenever the cross of Jesus began to cast even the tiniest shadow over our personal lives!....But God will take no one into his kingdom whose faith has not proven genuine amid tribulation and suffering. 'It is through many persecutions we must enter the kingdom of God' (Acts 14:22). This is why we must learn to cherish our tribulation before it is too late. Indeed, we must learn to rejoice in them and to boast in them.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditations on the Cross