Quotes About Sacrifice

When a man really gives up trying to make something out of himself—a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called clerical somebody), a righteous or unrighteous man,… when in the fullness of tasks, questions, success or ill-hap, experiences and perplexities, a man throws himself into the arms of God… then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, that is metanoia and it is thus that he becomes a man and Christian.

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

You are called into the community of faith; the call was not meant for you alone. You carry your cross, you struggle, and you pray in the community of faith, the community of those who are called.

And take up their cross." That cross is already there, ready, from the very beginning; we need only take it up. But to keep us from believing that we must simply choose any arbitrary cross, or simply pick out our suffering as we will, Jesus emphasizes that each of us has his or her own cross, ready, appointed, and appropriately measured by God.1

The religion of Christ is not a tidbit after One's bread; on the contrary, it is the bread or it is nothing. People should at least understand and concede this if they call themselves Christians.

Jesus goes on before to Jerusalem and to the cross, and they are filled with fear and amazement at the road he calls them to follow.

In the gospels the very first step a man must take is an act which radically affects his whole existence.

To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us.

o endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.

As Christ is Christ only as the suffering and rejected one, so the disciple is a disciple only as one who suffers and is rejected, as one crucified with Jesus. Discipleship, understood as being bound to the person of Jesus Christ, places the disciple under the law of Christ, that is, under the cross.

We break bread with the hungry[78] and share our home with them[79] for the sake of Christ's love, which belongs to the hungry as much as it does to us. If the hungry do not come to faith, the guilt falls on those who denied them bread. To bring bread to the hungry is preparing the way for the coming of grace.

Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death.

Genuine love is always self-forgetful in the true sense of the word.

I used to be very fond of thinking up and buying presents, but now that we have nothing to give, the gift God gave us in the birth of Christ will seem all the more glorious; the emptier our hands, the better we understand what Luther meant by his dying words: "We're beggars; it's true." The poorer our quarters, the more clearly we perceive that our hearts should be Christ's home on earth. (Letter to fiancée Maria von Wedemeyer, December 1, 1943)

Christ is not gloriously transported from earth into heaven. He must instead go to the cross. And precisely there, where the cross stands, the resurrection is near. Precisely here, where all lose faith in God, where all despair about the power of God, God is fully there, and Christ is alive and near.

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

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

To follow Jesus means self-renunciation and absolute adherence to him, and therefore a will dominated by lust can never be allowed to do what it likes.

Human beings have freedom toward death and the right to death, in the sense of sacrifice, but only when the good sought through sacrifice, and not the destruction of one's own life, is the reason for risking one's life.

self-denial is a necessary aspect of a Christian life; that the cross is central to human understanding; and that, without the atonement, every one of us would stand forever in the role of Judas.

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

The cross is not the suffering tied to being natural existence, but the suffering tied to being Christians. The cross is never simply a matter of suffering, but a matter of suffering and rejection, and even, strictly speaking, rejection for the sake of Jesus Christ, not for the sake of some other arbitrary behavior or confession.

According to our text, there is no road to faith or discipleship, no other road - only obedience to the call of Jesus.

Just as Christ is Christ only in virtue of his suffering and rejection, so the disciple is a disciple only in so far as he shares his Lord's suffering and rejection and crucifixion.