Quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1939 A Remarkable Life Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer1906-1939

A Remarkable Life

Dietrich Bonhoeffer


Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister. Raised in Berlin, Bonhoeffer was one of the few clergymen who opposed Adolph Hitler and the rise of Nazism in 1930’s Germany.


Late in World War II, Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazi SS on

April 9, 1945

He was 39 years of age.

11 days later, the American Army liberated the Flossenberg Concentration Camp


When God calls a man, he bids him

come and die.


The church can at times, like Christ himself, be without a roof over its head.

This must be so.

Real secularity consists in the church being able to renounce all privileges and

all its property but never Christ’s word and the forgiveness of sins.


The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community

may actually mean the exclusionof Christ.

In the poor brother Christ is knocking at the door.


In the birth of Jesus Christ God took on humanity, not just a

single man.


It is the voice of the church that is heard in singing together.

It is not you that sings, it is the church that is singing and you, as a member,

may share in the church’s song.


Through confession the break-through to community takes place.

Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from community.

The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin

over him.


Christians belong not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the midst of enemies. There they find their mission, their work.


Decisions which our work demands will be simpler and easier when they

are made, not in the fear of men, but in the presence of the Lord.


God is closer to us than the past.


Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross,

grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift

which has to be asked for, the door at which one must knock.


Grace is costly, because it was costly to God, because it costs God the life of

God’s son, “you were bought with a price”

Nothing should be cheap to us which is costly to God.


There is no sin in thought, word, or deed, no matter how personal or

secret, that does not inflict injury upon the whole fellowship.


The Christian belongs, not in the seclusion of a cloistered life, but in

the thick of foes.


Grace is free, but it is not cheap.


God does not want me to mold others into the image that seems good to me,

that is, into my own image.

God creates every person in the image of God’s Son, the Crucified, and this image, likewise, looked strange and ungodly to me before I grasped it.


Christian brotherhood is not an ideal;

but a divine reality.


If we are to learn what God promises, and what he fulfills, we must persevere in quiet meditation on the life, sayings, deeds, sufferings, and death of Jesus.


Jesus won power and space in this world by his weakness.

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

2 Corinthians 12:9


Christians must bear the burdens of each other.

Only as a burden is the other really a brother or sister…

and not just a person to be controlled.


Loving sisters and brothers is a commandment that could be misunderstood.

Loving enemies makes unmistakably clear what Jesus intends.

“But I say to you, Love your enemies; bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who

abuse and persecute you.”Matthew 5:43-44


Who indeed could be more worth our love, who could stand in greater need

of our love than those who hate?


This is the end, but for me it is the

beginning of life.


The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

Tertullian

Quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1939 A Remarkable Life Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

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