Bona Fide Belief

I get these short devotional segments by Bonhoeffer in my email every day. Today's was especially good, so I thought I'd share. :)

You complain that you cannot believe? No one should be surprised that they cannot come to believe so long as, in deliberate disobedience, they flee or reject some aspect of Jesus’ commandment. You do not want to subject some sinful passion, an enmity, a hope, your life plan, or your reason to Jesus’ commandment? Do not be surprised that you do not receive the Holy Spirit, that you cannot pray, that your prayer for faith remains empty! Instead, go and be reconciled with your sister or brother; let go of the sin which keeps you captive; and you will be able to believe again! If you reject God’s commanding word, you will not receive God’s gracious word. How would you expect to find community while you intentionally withdraw from it at some point? The disobedient cannot believe; only the obedient believe.

While the grace we receive is not by the merit of our works, or even our belief, it must be accompanied by obedience to be proved genuine, and not merely counterfeit. Hard words, but so good! May we not bring shame to the name of Christ by our unbelieving actions, but live in the freedom of obedience to the one who bought us with His blood.

Good things to think on near the end of this stressful, busy, rainy day. It's a busy season, but school's almost out for me!! :)

Truth, Sin, and the Cross

 We've been reading "The Cost of Discipleship" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a family, and we read a portion the other night which really stood out to me, especially as I've also been reading "Living The Cross Centered Life" by CJ Mahaney. I took the book to my room last night to reread that passage, and I ended up staying up way too late, as I couldn't help reading ahead. :P Sooo good. But anyways, since I don't have anything longer and more original, and I wanted to post something today, I thought I'd share a bit of it. The bulk of the book is an exposition on the sermon on the mount, and this particular chapter was focusing in on Matthew 5:33-37.

The commandment of truthfulness is really only another name for the totality of discipleship. Only those who follow Jesus and cleave to him are living in complete truthfulness. Such men have nothing to hide from their Lord. Their life is revealed before him, Jesus has recognized them and led them into the way of truth. They cannot hide their sinfulness from Jesus, for they have not revealed themselves to Jesus, but he has revealed himself to them by calling them to follow him. At the moment of their call, Jesus showed up their sin and made them aware of it. Complete truthfulness is only possible where sin has been uncovered, and forgiven by Jesus. Only those who are in a state of truthfulness through the confession of their sin to Jesus are not afraid to tell the truth wherever it must be told. The truthfulness which Jesus demands from his followers is the self-abnegation which does not hide sin. Nothing is hidden, everything is brought forth to the light of day.

In this question of truthfulness, what matters first and last is that a man's whole being should be exposed, his whole evil laid bare in the sight of God. But sinful men do not like this kind of truthfulness, and they resist it with all their might. That is why they persecute it and crucify it. It is only because we follow Jesus that we can be genuinely truthful, for then he reveals to us our sin upon the cross. The cross is God's truth about us, and therefore it is the only power which can make us truthful. When we know the cross we are no longer afraid of the truth. We need no more oaths to confirm the truth of our utterances, for we live in the perfect truth of God. ("The Cost of Discipleship" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pg. 138-139)

How clear this is, that only those who know Jesus Christ and have looked to the cross can be unafraid of truth. The cross, the place where we see the depths of the horror of our sin as we realize the cost of the atonement through the sacrifice of God's only Son, is a place of mockery for those who love their sin.

God's truth about us. What a heavy thing, for that truth reveals us as completely ugly, completely unworthy. And yet, where that sin is revealed, it is also atoned! This two-fold truth about sin and sanctification is the marvel of the cross, the crowning jewel of the revelation of God's truth, and the foundation of our faith. This is the truth Christ calls us to live in every day. I was really encouraged by this passage, and I hope you were too. :) Let us be encouraged that even when others revile us for clinging to the truth, it is for the sake of Christ.

"But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, 

and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin." (1 John 1:7)

I'm making friends with dead people....

This has nothing to do with Halloween or necromancing, in case you're worried. ;)

It all started in the frozen food section at Costco this summer. Amongst the herds of people gathered around the sample stations, my eye randomly fell upon a girl who was holding a book in her arms. In a glance I took in the front cover. It was nothing extraordinary - just a black and white photo of a bespectacled man. Something about the title seemed familiar though. Bonhoeffer... hmm, where have I seen that name before?

Suffice it to say that my steps soon led me to the book section, where I picked up a biography on a man of whom I had barely heard. Not one to make hasty purchases on anything over $5, I nonetheless was enticed to purchase the book, lured on by my current obsession with WWII. Anyhow, $9.99 could be easily justified if it turned out to be half-decent.

It did.

I just started reading Eric Metaxas' biography of Bonhoeffer last week, and it has been incredibly fascinating.  I've really been getting into biographies/journals lately, which isn't really typical for me, but I've been so encouraged by them.  As Brett and Alex Harris say, I've been "making friends with dead people".  These accounts remind me of the "great cloud of witnesses" that Hebrews 12:1 speaks of, and the hall of faith in Hebrews 11, which lists many examples of faithful men and women who lived their lives in obedience to God.

This is the same type of life I discovered as I began to research the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man who searched for truth and was found by God, and ultimately paid the ultimate price for his obedience when he was hanged by the gestapo.  I won't go into the details of his life here, but you can watch a 1/2 hour summary by Eric Metaxas here. (It starts slowly - if you want to skip the intro, go to 8:00) One of the things I have been most struck by so far is just how similar the world of Bonhoeffer's time was to the world of today, especially in terms of culture, philosophy, religion, and the church. I want to share a few quotes that really hit me. I pray that this generation of believers would be inspired by these words from the past, and empowered by the Spirit to seek and live the truth of God's Word.

  

"The religion of Christ is not a tidbit after one's bread, on the contrary, it is the bread or it is nothing. People should at least understand and concede this if they call themselves Christian."

"Humanism and mysticism, the seemingly most beautiful blossoms put forth by the Christian religion, extolled today as the highest ideals of the human spirit; indeed often as the crown itself of the Christian idea - [but] it is precisely the Christian idea itself that must reject them as an apotheosis of the creature and as such a challenge to the honor belonging to God alone."

"In New York they preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life."

"Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic... Do not defend God's Word, but testify to it... Trust to the Word."