These pages: The Cost of Discipleship
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The Cost of Discipleship
translated from the German Nachfolge by R.H. Fuller with some revision by Irmgard Booth Copyright © 1959 SCM Press Ltd (continued) | ||
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III. The Messengers | ||
23 The Work | Matthew 10:5,6 | |
We, who are of the Gentiles, were once shut out from the message of the gospel. [...] Not until after his resurrection does Jesus charge his apostles to go out into all the world. The disciples found it hard to understand this limitation of their commission, but in the end it turned out to be a means of grace for the Gentiles. When they received the good news, it was the good news of a crucified and risen Lord. | ||
Nothing could be more ruthless than to make men think there is still plenty of time to mend their ways. To tell men that the cause is urgent, and that the kingdom of God is at hand is the most charitable and merciful act we can perform, the most joyous news we can bring. | ||
24 The Suffering of the Messengers | Matthew 10:1625 | |
Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. How often have the ministers of Jesus made wrong use of this saying! [...] How difficult it is to draw the line with certainty between spiritual wisdom and worldly astuteness! [...] But Jesus never called his disciples into a state of uncertainty, but to one of supreme certainty. That is why his warning can only summon them to abide by the Word. [...] It is not our judgement of the situation which can show us what is wise, but only the truth of the Word of God. Here alone lies the promise of Gods faithfulness and help. It will always be true that the wisest course for the disciple is always to abide solely by the Word of God in all simplicity. | ||
IV. The Church of Jesus Christ and the Life of Discipleship | ||
27 Preliminary Questions |
The scriptures do not present us with a series of Christian types to be imitated according to choice: they preach to us in every situation the one Jesus Christ. To him alone must I listen. He is everywhere one and the same. To the questionwhere to‑day do we hear the call of Jesus to discipleship, there is no other answer than this: Hear the Word, receive the Sacrament; in it hear him himself, and you will hear his call. | |
28 Baptism | It is destructive of the unity of the Scriptures to say that the Pauline Christ is more alive for us than the Christ of the Synoptists. Of course such language is commonly regarded as genuine Reformation and historico-critical doctrine, but it is in fact the precise opposite of that, and indeed it is the most perilous kind of enthusiasm. Who tells us that the Pauline Christ is as alive for us to‑day as he was for St Paul? We got this assurance only from the scriptures. Or are we talking about a presence of Christ which is free and unbound by the Word? No, the scriptures are the only witness we have of Christs presence, and that witness is a unity, which also means that the presence they speak of includes the presence of Jesus Christ as he is presented in the Synoptic Gospels. The Jesus of the Synoptists is neither nearer nor further from us than the Christ of St Paul. The Christ who is present is the Christ of the whole scripture. He is the incarnate, crucified, risen and glorified Christ, and he meets us in his word. The difference between the terminology of the Synoptists and the witness of St Paul does not involve any break in the unity of the scriptural testimony. | |
It is baptism into the death of Christ which effects the forgiveness of sin and justification, and completes our separation from sin. The fellowship of the cross to which Jesus invited his disciples is the gift of justification through that cross, it is the gift of death and of the forgiveness of sins. The disciple who followed in the fellowship of the cross received exactly the same gift as the believer who was baptized after he had heard the teaching of St Paul. | ||
29 The Body of Christ |
In baptism a man puts on Christ, and that means the same as being incorporated into the body, into the one man, in whom there is neither Greek nor Jew nor bond nor free. No one can become a new man except by entering the Church, and becoming a member of the Body of Christ. It is impossible to become a new man as a solitary individual. The new man means more than the individual believer after he has been justified and sanctified. It means the Church, the Body of Christ, in fact it means Christ himself. Through his Spirit, the crucified and risen Lord exists as the Church, as the new man. It is just as true to say that his Body is the new humanity as to say that he is God incarnate dwelling in eternity. [...] When we have recognized the unity between Christ and his Body, the Church, we must also hold fast to the complementary truth of Christs Lordship over the Body. | |
30 The Visible Community | The Word of God seeks a Church to take unto itself. It has its being in the Church. It enters the Church by its own self-initiated movement. It is wrong to suppose that there is so to speak a Word on the one hand and a Church on the other, and that it is the task of the preacher to take that Word into his hands and move it so as to bring it into the Church and apply it to the Churchs needs. On the contrary, the Word moves of its own accord, and all the preacher has to do is to assist that movement and try to put no obstacles in its path. | Topic: |
Baptism and the Lords Supper belong to the fellowship of the Body of Christ alone, whereas the Word is intended not only for believers but also for unbelievers. The sacraments belong exclusively to the Church. Hence the congregation is in a true sense a baptismal and eucharistic congregation, and only secondarily a preaching congregation. | ||
In the Church men look upon one another no longer as free men or slaves, as men or women, but as members of Christs body. To be sure this does not mean that the slave is no longer a slave nor the man a man. But it does mean that in the Church no one has to be considered in his special capacity, whether he be Jew or Greek, freeman or bondservant. Any such respect of persons must be excluded at all costs. We take account of each other only with regard to our membership in the Body of Christ, that is to say, that we are all one in Christ. [...] Wherever Christians live together, conversing and dealing with one another, there is the Church, there they are in Christ. This is what transforms the whole character of their fellowship. | ||
When he admonishes the slave to stay as he is, it is not because he wants to make him a better citizen of the world or a more loyal one. It is not as though St Paul were trying to condone or gloss over a black spot in the social order. He does not mean that the class-structure of secular society is so good and godly an institution that it would be wrong to upset it by revolution. The truth of the matter is that the whole world has already been turned upside down by the work of Jesus Christ, which has wrought a liberation for freeman and slave alike. A revolution would only obscure that divine New Order which Jesus Christ has established. It would also hinder and delay the disruption of the existing world order in the coming of the kingdom of God. | ||
Become not the bondservants of men. This can happen in two different ways. First, it may happen by a revolution and the overthrow of the established order, and secondly by investing the established order with a halo of spirituality. Brethren, let each man, wherein he was called, therein abide with God. With Godand therefore become not bondservants of men, neither by revolution nor by false submission. To stay in the world with God means simply to live in the rough and tumble of the world and at the same time remain in the Body of Christ, the visible Church, to take part in its worship and to live the life of discipleship. In so doing we bear testimony to the defeat of this world. | ||
How then is it so easy for the Christians to find themselves in opposition to the powers? Because they are so easily tempted to resent their blunders and injustices. But if we harbour such resentments we are in mortal danger of neglecting the will of the God we are called to serve. If only Christians will concentrate on perceiving what is good and on doing it as God commands, they can live without fear of the authorities." [...] Do that which is good, without fear, and without limit or reserve. What right have we to blame the government when we do not do that which is good ourselves? How can we pass judgement on others when we invite the same condemnation ourselves? If you want to be fearless, do good. [...] Once again, St Paul is talking to the Christians, not to the State. His concern is that the Christians should persevere in repentance and obedience wherever they may be and whatever conflict should threaten them. He is not concerned to excuse or condemn any secular power. | ||
Let the Christian remain in the world, not because of the good gifts of creation, nor because of his responsibility for the course of the world, but for the sake of the Body of the incarnate Christ and for the sake of the Church. Let him remain in the world to engage in frontal assault on it, and let him live the life of his secular calling in order to show himself as a stranger in this world all the more. | ||
The limits and claims of the secular calling are fixed by our membership of the visible Church of Christ, and these limits are reached when the space which the Body of Christ claims and occupies in the world for its worship, its offices and the civic life of its members clashes with the worlds claim for space for its own activities. We shall at once know when the limit has been reached, for every member of the Church will then be obliged to make a public confession of Christ, and the world will be forced to react, either by calculated restraint or open violence. | ||
The older the world grows, the more heated becomes the conflict between Christ and Antichrist, and the more thorough the efforts of the world to get rid of the Christians. Until now the world had always granted them a lodging-place by allowing them to work for their own food and clothing. But a world that has become one hundred per cent anti-Christian cannot allow them even this private sphere of work for their daily bread. The Christians are now forced to deny their Lord for every crumb of bread they need. Either they must flee from the world, or go to prison; there is no other alternative. When the Christian community has been deprived of its last inch of space on the earth, the end will be near. | ||
There is a way of putting oneself on the same level as the world in the world as there is a way of creating ones own spiritual world in a monastery. There is a wrong way of staying in the world and a wrong way of fleeing from it. In both cases we are fashioning ourselves according to the world. But the Church of Christ has a different form from the world. Her task is increasingly to realize this form. It is the form of Christ himself, who came into the world and of his infinite mercy bore mankind and took it to himself, but who notwithstanding did not fashion himself in accordance with it but was rejected and cast out by it. He was not of this world. In the right confrontation with the world, the Church will become every more like to the form of its suffering Lord. | ||
Christians live like other men: they get married, they mourn and rejoice, they buy their requirements and use the world for the purpose of day-to-day existence. But they have everything through Christ alone, in him and for his sake. Thus they are not bound by it. They have everything as though they had it not. They do not set their heart on their possessions, but are inwardly free. | ||
The world is growing too small for the Christian community, and all it looks for is the Lords return. It still walks in the flesh, but with eyes upturned to heaven, whence he for whom they wait will come again. In the world the Christians are a colony of the true home, they are strangers and aliens in a foreign land, enjoying the hospitality of that land, obeying its laws and honouring its government. [...] But they are only passing through the country. At any moment they may receive the signal to move on. | ||
31 The Saints | Whenever we desire an independent righteousness of our own we are forfeiting our only chance of justification, which is through God and his righteousness. God alone is righteous. | |
Justification is the means whereby we appropriate the saving act of God in the past, and sanctification the promise of Gods activity in the present and future. Justification secured our entrance into fellowship and communion with Christ through the unique and final event of his death, and sanctification keeps us in that fellowship in Christ. Justification is primarily concerned with the relation between man and the law of God, sanctification with the Christians separation from the world until the second coming of Christ. Justification makes the individual a member of the Church whereas sanctification preserves the Church with all its members. Justification enables the believer to break away from his sinful past, sanctification enables him to abide in Christ, to persevere in faith and to grow in love. We may perhaps think of justification and sanctification as bearing the same relation to each other as creation and preservation. Justification is the new creation of the new man, and sanctification his preservation until the day of Jesus Christ. | ||
Brotherly forgiveness makes room for the forgiveness of Jesus to enter into their common life. Instead of seeing their neighbours as men who have injured them, they see them as men for whom Christ has won forgiveness on the cross. They meet on the basis of their common sanctification through the cross of Christ. The community of the saints is not an ideal community consisting of perfect and sinless men and women, where there is no need of further repentance. No, it is a community which proves that it is worthy of the gospel of forgiveness by constantly and sincerely proclaiming Gods forgiveness (which has nothing to do with self-forgiveness). It is a community of men and women who have genuinely encountered the precious grace of God, and who walk worthily of the gospel by not casting that grace recklessly away. In other words the preaching of forgiveness must always go hand-in-hand with the preaching of repentance, the preaching of the gospel with the preaching of the law. | Topic: | |
Good works then are ordained for the sake of salvation, but they are in the end those which God himself works within us. They are his gift, but it is our task to walk in them at every moment of our lives, knowing all the time that any good works of our own could never help us to abide before the judgement of God. | ||
32 The Image of Christ |
When the world began, God created Adam in his own image, as the climax of his creation. [...] Here, right from the beginning, is the mysterious paradox of man. He is a creature, and yet he is destined to be like his Creator. Created man is destined to bear the image of uncreated God. [...] But the false serpent persuaded Adam that he must still do something to become like God: he must achieve that likeness by deciding and acting for himself. Through this choice Adam rejected the grace of God, choosing his own action. He wanted instead to unravel the mystery of his being for himself, to make himself what God had already made him. That was the Fall of man. Adam became as Godsicut deusin his own way. But now that he had made himself god, he no longer had a God. | |
Either man models himself on the god of his own invention, or the true and living God moulds the human form into his image. [...] Since fallen man cannot rediscover and assimilate the form of God, the only way is for God to take the form of man and come to him. | ||
text checked (see note) Jan 2025 |