The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise godfearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFERDiscipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ.
More Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes
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Time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable.
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If you believe, take the first step, it leads to Jesus Christ. If you don’t believe, take the first step all the same, for you are bidden to take it.
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We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God dealt with us, and there he still deals with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace.
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No sacrifice which a lover would make for his beloved is too great for us to make for our enemy.
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Your life as a Christian should make non believers question their disbelief in God.
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Sanctification means that the Christians have been judged already, and that they are being preserved until the coming of Christ and are ever advancing towards it.
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The limitation of the ethical phenomenon to its place and time does not imply its rejection but, on the contrary, its validation. One does not use canons to shoot sparrows.
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God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.
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A false faith is capable of terrible and monstrous things.
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A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol.
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There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.
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Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise. To me it seems that peace and social justice are such things, as is Christ himself.
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Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.
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The fact that we do not speak it but sing it only expresses the fact that our spoken words are inadequate to express what we want to say, that the burden of our song goes far beyond all human words.
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In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.
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A love that left people alone in their guilt would not have real people as its object. So, in vicarious responsibility for people, and in His love for real human beings, Jesus becomes the one burdened by guilt.
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The wars of Israel were the only ‘holy wars’ in history, there can be no more wars of faith. The only way to overcome our enemy is by loving him.
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May God in his mercy lead us through these times; but above all, may he lead us to himself.
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By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.
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Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one’s community back from the path of sin.
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When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.
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If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?
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Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ.
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A pastor should never complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.
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The Church is the Church only when it exists for others, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.
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We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER