"The cross is the one power on the planet which proves that struggling love can avenge and vanquish evil."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 - 1945)
THE COST of Discipleship by Bonhoeffer is arguably the 20 th Century church at its biggest. Perhaps Billy Graham and A.W. Tozer and Mother Teresa and Karl Barth (amongst a score of others) made as lots of a contribution, nevertheless few literary works come close to Bonhoeffer's thesis on the Christian life.
Bonhoeffer calls Matthew chapter T "the Peculiar" in that the Christian's love is unfathomable in its resemblance of the cross.
As we take up the blood of Christ into the gut of our souls, bearing the broken bones of our Saviour in our beings, we come home, afresh, to the central nuance of the gospel.
This gospel of the cross and the resurrection is, firstly, an outwitting of the devil at his private recreation and, secondly, it's hope from embers.
When all appears calamitously forlorn, that is when the Christian hope rises from ashes.
What makes the cross conquer evil is the resurrection. The cross, of itself, was the foretaste of the victory to return; a prevue of evil's demise. It crushed all of Satan's prideful hope. And however the fullness of the victory was then realised inside the resurrection of our Lord.
But it was the cross that defeated the devil - a love evil could not see coming.
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Think of the personal power of the cross, engaged with, embraced, carried, and ensconced.
It is most retro, in any event, to affiliate with one factor as shameful as a result of the cross. Yet, take into consideration its power as soon as we do nothing nevertheless rise up inside the face of an atrocity.
Evil has nothing in the direction of us inside the making of the atrocity. It expects us to be upset. But the cross is peace in utter hell. The cross takes the fury of hell and withstands every barb pointed its technique; larger, it willingly receives the street-sweeping spray of shards! The cross makes a way for evil to do all it wants. And, in the long term, evil is exasperated, because of it will probably't administration our response.
Evil is defeated inside the quiet poise of absorbing hurts via the cross.
Suffering love is the fullest portion of Christ's Spirit; the very illustration of the cross.
Suffering love vindicates the partaker. Their lack of response is the very key to victory, because of love cannot fail when it's beneath fireside.
Suffering love is Christ's victory on the cross, because it's ours of struggling love for the cross.
© 2015 C. M. Wickham.
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