I would like to post a lengthy quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This comes from his classic book, Ethics. I saw this quote in William Paul Young’s latest book, “Lies We Believe about God.”
I’m posting this because it not only fits my current series, “Jesus Christ: Savior of the World,” but it pretty much sums up my theology. Enjoy!
“In the body of Jesus Christ, God is united with humankind, all humanity is accepted by God, and the world is reconciled to God. In the body of Jesus Christ, God took on the sin of all the world and bore it. There is no part of the world, no matter how lost, no matter how godless, that has not been accepted by God in Jesus Christ and reconciled to God.”
“God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings AS THEY ARE; not an ideal world, but the REAL WORLD. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love. God establishes a most intimate unity with this. God becomes human, a real human being. While we exert ourselves to grow beyond our humanity, to leave the human behind us, GOD BECOMES HUMAN; and we must recognize that God wills that we be human, real human beings. While we distinguish between pious and godless, good and evil, noble and base, God loves REAL PEOPLE without distinction. God has no patience with our dividing the world and humanity according to our standards and imposing ourselves as judges over them. God leads us into absurdity by becoming a real human being and a companion of sinners, thereby forcing us to become the judges of God. God stands beside the real human being and the real world against ALL THEIR ACCUSERS. So God becomes accused along with human beings and the world, and thus the judges become the accused.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (New York: Touchstone, 1995), p. 66-68, 84-85
In My Father's House 
A wonderful perspective of God’s agape type of love. Romans 5:8 says “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Always appreciate Bonhoeffer’s insights. Everyone should read his “The Cost of Discipleship.”
Thanks Michael. Yes, Romans 5:8 is a good reference. I gave a whole message on this quote recently, showing Bible verses for every point. Bonhoeffer was brilliant. Cost of Discipleship is a classic, too. Blessings.
Reblogged this on INSPIRATION with an ATTITUDE and commented:
Wow…
Reblogged. Wow.
Yes. Wow. 😊
Wow. Just wow.
Bonhoeffer:
“Is Christian ethics merely a specific set of Christian answers to the question of good and evil, right and wrong? To make it no more than this is to forget that man’s fall was a fall into the knowledge of good and evil, reinforced by the inexorable knowledge of a condemning law, and that man’s restoration in Christ is a restoration to freedom and grace, to a love that needs no law since it knows and does only what is in accord with love and with God. To imprison ethics in the realm of division, of good and evil, right and wrong, is to condemn it to sterility, and rob it of its real reason for existing, which is love. Love cannot be reduced to one virtue among many others prescribed by ethical imperatives. When love is only “a virtue” among many, man forgets that “God is love” and becomes incapable of that all-embracing love by which we secretly begin to know God as our Creator and Redeemer – who has saved us from the limitations of a purely restrictive and aimless existence “under a law.”