Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Give love to your enemies as you have received it from Jesus

“The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them…The Christian must treat His enemy as a brother and requite hostility with love. His behavior must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus…Who needs our love more than those who are consumed with hatred and are utterly devoid of love?…How is this love to behave? Jesus gives the answer: bless, do good, and pray for your enemies without reserve and without respect of persons.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (SCM Press: New York, 1959) 148.

I read Bonhoeffer today because I got to be with Eric Metaxas this week at an Alpha event in Chicago. Brilliant brother. Today, I am in Wisconsin and I have the privilege of preaching at Faith Waupaca, where my good friend Dr. Eric Tober, serves as pastor.

I chose this quote because I know few pastors on earth who exhibit the love of Christ more generously than Eric Tober! I heard his testimony when I helped host a Journey of Generosity for EFCA leaders and it moved me.

Eric’s story is his to share, but what I will tell you is this. He’s one of those guys that is so loving and so kind, that you’d think he had the perfect dad. Well, he does. It’s his heavenly Father! Few men receive and share the God’s love as generously as Eric!

“If you are not generous with a meager income, you will never be generous with abundance.”

Harold Nye as recounted in The Westminster Collection of Christian Quotations ed. Martin Manser (Louisville: WJKP, 2001) 121.

“Above all, measure your progress by your improvement in love to God and man…It is the principle of love which disposes them to yield themselves up without reserve to the service of Him who has bought them with the price of His own blood…The bulk of nominal Christians…give no more than they dare withhold; they abstain from nothing but what they must practice…in short, they know Christianity only as a system of restraints…despoiled of every liberal and generous principle…But true Christians consider themselves not as satisfying some rigorous creditor, but as discharging a debt of gratitude.”

William Wilberforce (1759-1833) A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians with the Higher and Middle Classes contrasted with Real Christianity (Boston: Nathaniel Willis, 1815) 333-334.

“I define an ordinary saint as a person whose life cannot be discussed without also talking about the life of Jesus. A saint is one whose life makes no sense apart from God. When a person gets lost in the worship of this God, their life becomes lost in His service. The life of one who answer the call to worship the risen Son of God becomes something of an “outlier” in the world. Sadly, all too often, they become something of an anomaly in the Church. Some admire them without understanding them and say things like, “I really admire what you are doing.” Under their breath they whisper, “Better you than me.” Others quietly talk about the “waste” of their life.”

J.D. Walt in Called:?! Following a Future filled with the Possible (Asbury Theological Seminary: Seedbed Publishing, 2011) 17.

Does your obedience to Jesus Christ label you an “outlier” to the world and an “anomaly” in the church? That’s my prayer for myself and each of you reading this! May our lives makes no sense apart from God!

J.D. is my friend and an ordinary saint whose life is lost in God’s service. Check out his 21-day devotional: Called:?!

Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19-21

I’ve creatively distances myself from this, namely, a strategic focus on the “treasures in heaven” with a blind eye to the contrary “treasures on earth,” addressing the spiritual list, ignoring the tangible list. But Jesus set these two in opposition, much like:

You can’t serve God and money.
You’re either a sheep or a goat.
There is only a wide road and a narrow road.
You either love your brother in Christ, or you’re a liar.

We’ve invented a thousand shades of gray, devising a comfortable Christian experience we can all live with—super awesome, except the Bible doesn’t support it. According to Scripture, no real disciple serves God while addicted to the dollar. There is no sheep/goat hybrid. There is no middle road. There is no true believer who hates his brother.

Grayed-down discipleship is an easier sell, but it created pretend Christians, obsessing over Scriptures we like while conspicuously ignoring the rest. Until God asks for everything and we answer, “It’s yours,” we don’t yet have ears to hear or eyes to see. We’re still deaf to the truth, blind to freedom, deceived by the treasures of the world, imagining them to be the key when they are actually the lock.

Jen Hatmaker, Seven: Clothes, Spending, Waste, Stress, Media, Possessions, Food – An Experimental Mutiny against Excess (Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2012) 92-93.

“Whatever is not given is lost because, as we ourselves must one day die, all that we have clung to, to the very end, will die with us, but what we have given away will escape corruption for it has been sent ahead into eternity.”

Raniero Cantalmessa, Come, Creator Spirit: Meditations on the Veni Creator (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2003) 86.

This morning I am in Franklin, TN, in the home of a dear brother, J.D. Walt. He authored, Creed, a seven-week reflection on the Apostle’s Creed, which Sammy and I read through this past Summer. J.D. is also a songwriter. Among his songs is Uncreated One made famous by Chris Tomlin.

J.D. was generous to give me this book, Come, Creator Spirit, which has significantly shaped his life. Based on the excerpt I read this morning, I commend it to you. Raniero Cantalmessa holds the role of “Preacher to the Papal Household” or in plain terms, he’s the Pope’s (and J.D.‘s) preacher.

J.D. serves as “Chief Sower” of Seedbed, Asbury Theological Seminary’s virtual field in which I have sown videos and resources for a Great Awakening. Last night J.D. spoke a powerful word: “We don’t give love because we have it; we have love because we give it.” Amen! Meditate on that today (cf. 1 Jn 4:11-12)!

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. Acts 4:32

“What you do with money and possessions declares loudly what sort of a community you are, and the statement made by the Early Church’s practice was clear and definite. No wonder they were able to give such a powerful testimony to the resurrection of Jesus.”

N.T. Wright, Acts for Everyone part one, ch. 1-12 (London: SPCK, 2008), notes on Acts 4:32 on page 76.

“Forbid it, Lord, that our roots become too firmly attached to this earth, that we should fall in love with things. Help us to understand that the pilgrimage of life is but an introduction, a preface, a training school for what is to come.

Then shall we see all of life in its true perspective. Then shall we not fall in love with the things of time, but come to love the things that endure. Then shall we be saved from the tyranny of possessions, which we have no leisure to enjoy, of property whose care becomes a burden.

Give us we pray, the courage to simplify our lives.

So we may be mature in our faith, childlike but never childish, humble but never cringing, understanding but never conceited. So help us God, to live and not merely to exist, that we may have joy in our work. In Thy name, who alone can give us moderation and balance and zest for living, we pray. Amen.

Peter Marshall in Hymns for the Family of God (Franklin: Brentwood-Benson, 1976) #464.

“This sharing was not the result of legislation; it was utterly spontaneous. It is not when the law compels us to share but when the heart moves us to share that society is really Christian.”

William Barclay The New Daily Study Bible: Acts of the Apostles on Acts 4:23-31 in the third edition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003) 49.

“They choose to follow a handful of Old Testament texts in the Deuteronomic tradition, and ignore completely the unanimous witness of the New Testament, which portrays discipleship not in terms of worldly success, but in terms of radical obedience and service—service that involves the sharing of possessions rather than the accumulation of them. There is simply no gospel character to the claims of the prosperity gospel, no element of genuine Christian discipleship.”

Luke Timothy Johnson in Sharing Possessions: What Faith Demands second edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011) 28.