Quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Life is not a thing, an essence, or a concept, but a person—more specifically, a particular and unique person.

Your life as a Christian should make non believers question their disbelief in God.

In family devotions it is best that the various members thereof undertake the consecutive reading in turn. When this is done it will soon become apparent that it is not easy to read the Bible aloud for others. The more artless, the more objective, the more humble one's attitude toward the material is, the better will the reading accord with the subject.

The disciples are not to judge. If they do so, they will themselves be judged by God. The sword wherewith they judge their brethren will fall upon their own heads. Instead of cutting themselves off from their brother as the just from the unjust, they find themselves cut off from Jesus.

The cross is the sign that stands in judgment on all the false security in our lives and restores faith in God alone.

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.

They are to go forth in the battle-dress of poverty, taking as little with them as a traveler who knows he will get board and lodging with friends at the end of the day. This shall be an expression of their faith, not in men, but in their heavenly father who sent them and will care for them. It is this that will make their gospel credible, for they proclaim the coming Kingdom of God.

Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God—the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. Where are these responsible people?

As Christ is Christ only as the suffering and rejected one, so the disciple is a disciple only as one who suffers and is rejected, as one crucified with Jesus. Discipleship, understood as being bound to the person of Jesus Christ, places the disciple under the law of Christ, that is, under the cross.

The Incarnation is the ultimate reason why the service of God cannot be divorced from the service of man.

It is in fact more important for us to know what God did to Israel, to His Son Jesus Christ, than to seek what God intends for us today.

In Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.