Top 500 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “It is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

302. “We have to learn that personal suffering is a more effective key, a more rewarding principle for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

303. “Only because the message concerning Jesus Christ must still go forth and find believers, and because our task is not yet perfected, does God in His patience continue to sustain us with His good gifts.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

304. “It is a costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

305. “Prayer means nothing else but the readiness to appropriate the Word, and what is more, to let it speak to me in my personal situation, in my particular tasks, decisions, sins, and temptations.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

306. “The moment we begin to feel satisfied that we are making some progress along the road of sanctification, it is all the more necessary to repent and confess that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Yet the Christian life is not one of gloom, but of ever increasing joy in the Lord. God alone knows our good works; all we know is His good work.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

307. “Holy Scripture is more than a watchword. It is also more than ‘light for today’. It is God’s revealed Word for all men, for all times. Holy Scripture does not consist of individual passages; it is a unit and is intended to be used as such.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

308. “All are called to be what in the reality of God they already are.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

309. “It is wrong, in this age of necessary decisions, to bully people into decisions that are neither genuine nor necessary.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

310. “I believe that God can and will bring good out of evil, even out of the greatest evil. For that purpose he needs men who make the best use of everything. I believe that God will give us all the strength we need to help us to resist in all times of distress. But he never gives it in advance, lest we should rely on ourselves and not on him alone. A faith such as this should allay all our fears for the future.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

311. “When you read the Bible, you must think that here and now, God is speaking with me.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

312. “Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all he has. It is the pearl of great price to by which the merchant will sell all his goods.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

313. “Every sermon must contain a certain shot of heresy.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

314. “Once a man has truly experienced the mercy of God in his life he will henceforth aspire only to serve.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

315. “The richness of God’s Word ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

316. “Christian marriage is marked by discipline and self-denial. Christ is the Lord even of marriage.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

317. “Politics are not the task of a Christian.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

318. “To reproach in a modern tyranny a people as a whole for failing to revolt is as if one would reproach a prisoner for failing to escape from a heavily guarded prison.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

319. “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.4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Coming of Jesus in Our Midst.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

320. “Thus this spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

321. “There is only one church, the church of faith ruled by the word of Jesus Christ alone. This is the true catholic church that has never disappeared and is still concealed in the church of Rome. It is the body of Christ – corpus Christi. It is the true unity of the West.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

322. “But it is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform a service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it it to be arranged by God.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

323. “The future and the hope for the middle class church lies in the renewal of its lifeblood, which is only possible if the church succeeds in winning the working class.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

324. “At the beginning of a new year, many people have nothing better to do than to make a list of bad deeds and resolve from now on – how many such “from-now-ons” have there already been! – to begin with better intentions, but they are still stuck in the middle of their paganism.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

325. “Not everyone can wait: neither the sated nor the satisfied nor those without respect can wait. The only ones who can wait are people who carry restlessness around with them.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

326. “It is infinitely easier to suffer in obedience to a human command than to accept suffering as free, responsible men.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

327. “God cannot endure that unfestive, mirthless attitude of ours in which we eat our bread in sorrow, with pretentious, busy haste, or even with shame. Through our daily meals He is calling us to rejoice, to keep holiday in the midst of our working day.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

328. “If we want to participate in this Advent and Christmas event, we cannot simply sit there like spectators in a theater and enjoy all the friendly pictures. Rather, we must join in the action that is taking place and be drawn into this reversal of all things ourselves. Here we too must act on the stage, for here the spectator is always a person acting in the drama. We cannot remove ourselves from the action.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

329. “A love that left people alone in their guilt would not have real people as its object. So, in vicarious responsibility for people, and in His love for real human beings, Jesus becomes the one burdened by guilt.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

330. “There remains an experience of incomparable value.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

331. “We cannot approach the manger of the Christ child in the same way we approach the cradle of another child. Rather, when we go to his manger, something happens, and we cannot leave it again unless we have been judged or redeemed. Here we must either collapse or know the mercy of God directed toward us.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

332. “Wherever there are sinners, the weak, the sorrowful, the poor in the world, that is where God goes.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

333. “God alone judges, and God’s judgment is helpful and healing. After all, we can only serve other Christians; we can never place ourselves above them.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

334. “God’s truth judges created things out of love, and Satan’s truth judges them out of envy and hatred.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

335. “Neighbourliness is not a quality in other people, it is simply their claim on ourselves.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

336. “Jesus is the only significance. Beside Jesus nothing has any significance. He alone matters.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

337. “Jesus himself had called and chosen Judas! That is the real mystery, for Jesus knew from the beginning who would betray him.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

338. “Principles are only tools in the hands of God; they will soon be thrown away when they are no longer useful.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

339. “The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

340. “Every Christian must be fully Christian by bringing God into his whole life, not merely into some spiritual realm.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

341. “No one knows God unless God reveals Himself to him.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

342. “Why do I meditate? Because I am a Christian. Therefore, every day in which I do not penetrate more deeply into the knowledge of God’s Word in Holy Scripture is a lost day for me. I can only move forward with certainty upon the firm ground of the Word of God. And, as a Christian, I learn to know the Holy Scripture in no other way than by hearing the Word preached and by prayerful meditation.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

343. “Help must come from the outside, and it has come and comes daily and answers in the Word of Jesus Christ...”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

344. “Only he who gives thanks for little things receives the big things. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts he has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

345. “Are you afraid of God’s wrath? Then go to the child in the manger and receive there the peace of God.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

346. “The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

347. “Before Jesus leads His disciples into suffering, humiliation, disgrace, and disdain, He summons them and shows Himself to them as the Lord in God’s glory.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

348. “Suffering means being cut off from God. Therefore those who live in communion with him cannot really suffer.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

349. “Here all fear of one another, all timidity about praying freely in one’s own words in the presence of others may be put aside where in all simplicity and soberness the common, brotherly prayer is lifted to God by one of the brethren. But likewise all comment and criticism must cease whenever words of prayer howsoever halting are offered in the name of Jesus Christ. It is in fact the most normal thing in the common Christian life to pray together.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

350. “Those who are still afraid of men have no fear of God, and those who have fear of God have ceased to be afraid of men. All preachers of the gospel will do well to recollect this saying daily.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer