Tag Archives: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I'm not sure how to add a youtube video from my ipad, so...

here's the link

or

Anyway, I'm going through Advent devotionals, and I'm reminded (again) that we need Christmas, because we need the cross more.

My daily Bible reading was Acts 4. Verses 14 and 15

But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses

Bonhoeffer wrote:

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.

Sh'ma tells us to "hear, o Israel, that our God is One" -

Every member of the Trinity is involved in Advent - God the Father, sent God the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit to be born in a manger, in order so that He might die, so that we might live.

Our God is One
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Coming of Jesus in Our Midst”

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer