Dietrich Bonhoeffer famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Being a Christan is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Who can really be faithful in great things if he has not learned to be faithful in the things of daily life?
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
The church is not a religious community of worshippers of Christ but is Christ himself who has taken form among people.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one of them turned to him.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
When you read the Bible, you must think that here and now, God is speaking with me
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Your life as a Christian should make non believers question their disbelief in God.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
The gift of Christ is not the Christian religion, but the grace and love of God which culminate in the cross.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Only he who believes is obedient and only he who is obedient believes.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Cheap grace is grace without discipleship.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won where the way leads to the cross.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
The Lord confers great honor on his servants when he brings them suffering....
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Do not worry! Earthly goods deceive the human heart into believing that they give it security and freedom from worry. But in truth, they are what cause anxiety. The heart which clings to goods receives with them the choking burden of worry. Worry collects treasures, and treasures produce more worries. We desire to secure our lives with earthly goods; we want our worrying to make us worry-free, but the truth is the opposite. The chains which bind us to earthly goods, the clutches which hold the goods tight, are themselves worries.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
If any man would come after me, let him deny himself." The disciple must say to himself the same words Peter said of Christ when he denied him: "I know not this man." Self-denial is never just a series of isolated acts of mortification or asceticism. It is not suicide, for there is an element of self-will even in that. To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self denial can say is: "He leads the way, keep close to him.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
But discipleship never consists in this or that specific action: it is always a decision, either for or against Jesus Christ...Christ speaks to us exactly as he spoke to them. It was not as though they first recognized him as the Christ and then received his command. They believed his word and command and recognized him as the Christ--in that order.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists of listening to them. Just as love of God begins with listening to his word, so the beginning of love for our brothers and sisters is learning to listen to them.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God, who will thwart our plans and frustrate our ways time and again, even daily, by sending people across our path with their demands and requests. We can, then, pass them by, preoccupied with our important daily tasks, just as the priest-perhaps reading the Bible-passed by the man who had fallen among robbers. When we do that, we pass by the visible sign of the Cross raised in our lives to show us that God’s way, and not our own, is what counts.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
God does not love some ideal person, but rather human beings just as we are, not some ideal world, but rather the real world.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve -- even in pain -- the authentic relationship.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
A Christian is someone who shares the sufferings of God in the world.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected.... Hoarding is idolatry.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is knocking at the door.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
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.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one's heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Who am I? this or the other? Am I one person today and tomorrow another? Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others, and before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling? Or is something within me still like a beaten army fleeing in disorder from a victory already achieved? Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Disciples will not be weakened by suffering, worn down, and embittered until they are broken. Instead, they bear suffering, by the power of him who supports them. The disciples bear the suffering laid on them only by the power of him who bears all suffering on the cross. As bearers of suffering, they stand in communion with the Crucified.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them. So often Christians, especially preachers, think that their only service is always to have to 'offer' something when they are together with other people. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking. Many people seek a sympathetic ear and do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking even when they should be listening.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
To be sure, God shall call you, and us, only at the hour that God has chosen. Until that hour, which lies in God's hand alone, we shall be protected even in the greatest danger; and from our gratitude for such protection ever new readiness surely arises for the final call
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
God's truth judges created things out of love, and Satan's truth judges them out of envy and hatred.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Often we combat our evil thoughts most effectively if we absolutely refuse to allow them to be expressed in words..
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
The entire day receives order and discipline when it acquires unity. This unity must be sought and found in morning prayer. The morning prayer determines the day.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
The person who’s in love with their vision of community will destroy community. But the person who loves the people around them will create community everywhere they go.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Just as our love for God begins with listening to God's Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it is a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
In me there is darkness, But with You there is light; I am lonely, but You do not leave me; I am feeble in heart, but with You there is help; I am restless, but with You there is peace. In me there is bitterness, but with You there is patience; I do not understand Your ways, But You know the way for me.†“Lord Jesus Christ, You were poor And in distress, a captive and forsaken as I am. You know all man’s troubles; You abide with me When all men fail me; You remember and seek me; It is Your will that I should know You And turn to You. Lord, I hear Your call and follow; Help me.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
There are only two places where the powerful and great in this world lose their courage, tremble in the depths of their souls, and become truly afraid. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ....No priest, no theologian stood at the cradle of Bethlehem. And yet, all Christian theology finds its beginnings in the miracle of miracles, that God became human.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. . . . We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know; God wants us to realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that are solved. . . . God is no stop-gap; he must be recognized as the center of life, not when we are at the end of our resources.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear rather than too much. Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now. Christian should take a stronger stand in favor of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
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.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
In Jesus, the service of God and the service of the least of the brethren were one.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Only those who obey can believe, and only those who believe can obey.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Salvation is free, but discipleship will cost you your life
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Being free means "being free for the other," because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Fruit is always the miraculous, the created; it is never the result of willing, but always a growth. The fruit of the Spirit is a gift of God, and only He can produce it. They who bear it know as little about it as the tree knows of its fruit. They know only the power of Him on whom their life depends
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
It is not that God's help and presence must still be proved in our life; rather God's presence and help have been demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ. It is in fact more important for us to know what God did to Israel, in God's Son Jesus Christ, than to discover what God intends for us today. The fact that Jesus Christ died is more important than the fact that I will die. And the fact that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, will be raised on the day of judgment
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Let him who cannot be alone beware of community... Let him who is not in community beware of being alone... Each by itself has profound perils and pitfalls. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and the one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation and despair.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Fulfilled life is possible in spite of unfulfilled wishes.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
The child asks of the Father whom he knows. Thus, the essence of Christian prayer is not general adoration, but definite, concrete petition. The right way to approach God is to stretch out our hands and ask of One who we know has the heart of a Father.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to each of us.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God. Therefore, people cannot make a new beginning at all; they can only pray for one. Where people are on their own and live by their own devices, there is only the old, the past.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
You can only learn what obedience is by obeying
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
The early morning belongs to the Church of the risen Christ. At the break of light it remembers the morning on which death and sin lay prostrate in defeat and new life and salvation were given to mankind
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
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.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can't, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
And if we ask how are we to know where our hearts are, the answer is just as simple - everything which hinders us from loving God above all things and acts as a barrier between ourselves and our obedience to Jesus is our treasure, and the place where our heart is.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
The Incarnation is the ultimate reason why the service of God cannot be divorced from the service of man.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
It is the nature of strong people that they can bring out crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
It is the task of youth not to reshape the church, but rather to listen to the word of God.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Love, in the sense of spontaneous, unreflective action, spells the death of the old man.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
As long as we let the Word of God be our only armor, we can look confidently into the future.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
the world exercises dominion by force and Christ and Christians conquer by service.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
In the gospels the very first step a man must take is an act which radically affects his whole existence.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
May God in His mercy lead us through these times; but above all, may He lead us to Himself.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Man seeks, in his manhood, not orders, not laws and peremptory dogmas, but counsel from one who is earnest in goodness and faithful in friendship, making man free.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God's coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God's coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray. The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and His work become the one and only thing that is vital between us.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Where a people prays, there is the church; and where the church is; there is never loneliness.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
Jesus is the only significance. Beside Jesus nothing has any significance. He alone matters.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -
When our will wholeheartedly enters into the prayer of Christ, then we pray correctly.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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