Jesus, the Cross, our Call to Die

Here are some more excerpts from Bonhoeffer:

If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity, as one of the trials and tribulations of life. We have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering.

This notion has ceased to be intelligible to a Christianity which no longer sees any difference between an ordinary human life and a life committed to Christ.

Every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die, and therefore Jesus Christ and his call are necessarily our death as well as our life.