![]() Loving one’s enemies leads disciples to the way of the cross and into communion with the crucified one. How does love become unconquerable? By never asking what the enemy is doing to it, and only asking what Jesus has done. Every persecution can only serve to bring the enemy closer to reconciliation with God, to make love more unconquerable. Every insult from our enemy will only bind us closer to God and to our enemy. We are doing for them in vicarious representative action what they cannot do for themselves. Now we are taking up their neediness and poverty, their being guilty and lost, and interceding for them before God. ![]() But even in doing so, they cannot harm and conquer us if we take this last step to them in intercessory prayer. Jesus does not promise us that the enemy we love, we bless, to whom we do good, will not abuse and persecute us. We are with them, near them, for them before God. In prayer we go to our enemies, to stand at their side. “Pray for those who abuse and persecute you.” That is the most extreme. Matthew 5: On the “Extraordinary” of Christian Life He declares at the outset that his sole concern is to search not for new battle cries and catchwords but “for Jesus himself.” Bonhoeffer’s questions were shocking in their directness: What did Jesus want to say to us? What does he want from us today?” ![]() These were issues that had disturbed Bonhoeffer during the gestation period of this book. What did it mean to declare oneself a follower of Jesus Christ? What were Christians to do about the seemingly “impossible demands” of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount? How effective and relevant were the Matthean Beatitudes again the materialism, militarism, and ruthless dictatorship that had come to dominate Germany in Bonhoeffer’s own time? How were Christians to act responsibly in the Church Struggle created by Hitler and Nazism? Within its pages he confronts his readers time and again with his own stark challenges to their facile, less than Christlike ways of being Christian. This article lets us know what Jesus wants from us today.ĭiscipleship was the largest and most influential book published by Dietrich Bonhoeffer during his lifetime. Summary: It is solely the love of Jesus Christ, who went to the cross for his enemies and prayed on the cross for them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 - 1945), a German theologian, pastor, and ecumenist ![]()
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