Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Life Together:
Whoever lives beneath the cross of Jesus, and has discerned in the
cross of Jesus the utter ungodliness of all people and of their own
hearts, will find there is no sin that can ever be unfamiliar.
Whoever has once been appalled by the horror of their own sin,
which nailed Jesus to the cross, will no longer be appalled by even the
most serious sin of another Christian; rather they know the human heart
from the cross of Jesus.
Such persons know how totally lost is
the human heart in sin and weakness, how it goes astray in the ways of
sin—and know too that this same heart is accepted in grace and mercy.
Only another Christian who is under the cross can hear my
confession. It is not experience with life but experience of the cross
that makes one suited to hear confession. The most experienced judge of
character knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest
Christian who lives beneath the cross of Jesus.
The greatest
psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot comprehend this
one thing: what sin is. Psychological wisdom knows what need and
weakness and failure are, but it does not know the ugliness of the human
being. And so it also does not know that human beings are ruined only
by their sin and are healed only by forgiveness. The Christian alone
knows this. In the presence of a psychologist I can only be sick; in the
presence of another Christian I can be a sinner.
The
psychologist must first search my heart, and yet can never probe its
innermost recesses. Another Christian recognizes just this: here comes a
sinner like myself, a godless person who wants to confess and longs for
God’s forgiveness.
The psychologist views me as if there were
no God. Another believer views me as I am before the judging and
merciful God in the cross of Jesus Christ.
When we are so
pitiful and incapable of hearing the confession of one another, it is
not due to a lack of psychological knowledge, but a lack of love for the
crucified Jesus Christ.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together and
Prayerbook of the Bible, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 5 (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1996), 114-16.
Are you living beneath the Cross of Jesus? Have you been appalled by your own sin?
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