Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes

Leaders are for calling people to their better angels, for helping guide them to a kind of sterner, more mature sense of what we need to do. To me, Reagan's brand of leadership was what I call 'a liturgy of absolution.' He absolved Americans almost in a priestly role to contend with sin. Who wouldn't want that?

The question is not How much may I indulge in and still be saved. God forbid! I must rather ask, What about Christ's will and the example I set for my fellow Christians?

May every Church and Christian community be a place of mercy amid so much indifference.

Everyone in daily life carries such a heavy mixed burden on his own conscience that he is reluctant to penalize those who have been caught.

Cruelty is the only sin.

The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.

God's grace justifies sinners, but it never justifies sin!

there is only one unpardonable sin--deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven.

Those trapped in sin will not normally thank you for pointing out the darkness in their lives.

Christian society is like a bundle of sticks laid together, whereof one kindles another. Solitary men have fewest provocations to evil, but, again, fewest incitations to good. So much as doing good is better than not doing evil will I account Christian good-fellowship better than an hermitish and melancholy solitariness.

If thou hast sinned, lie not down without repentance; for the want of repentance, after one has sinned, makes the heart yet harder and harder.

The Christian church was designed to make sinners sweat. I have always believed that, and I still believe it. The messages preached in our churches should make backslidden Christians sweat. And if I achieve that objective when I preach, I thank God with all of my heart, no matter what people think of me.

When I walked into the Christian section of a bookstore, the message was clear: Faith is something you do alone. Rick does not have much tolerance for people living alone. He's like Bill Clinton in that he feels everyone's pain. If Rick thinks somebody is lonely, he can't sleep at night. He wants us all to live with each other and play nice so he can get some rest. Tortured soul.

There is no immunity from the consequences of sin; punishment is swift and sure to one and all.

It costs something to be a true Christian. It will cost us our sins, our self-righteousn ess, our ease and our worldliness.

God will judge people on the basis of what they did in light of what they knew.

Jesus understands our weaknesses and sins; and he forgives us if we allow ourselves to be forgiven.

A man who fears not God, will break all his laws with an easy conscience, but one who is the favorite of heaven, who has been indulged to sit at royal banquets, who knows the eternal love of God to him, cannot bear that there should be any evil way in him that might grieve the Spirit and bring dishonor to the name of Christ. A very little sin, as the world calls it, is a very great sin to a truly awakened Christian.

Confess yourself to heaven, Repent what's past, avoid what is to come, And do not spread the compost on the weeds To make them ranker.

Why do Christians sing when they are together? The reason is, quite simply, because in singing together it is possible for them to speak and pray the same Word at the same time; in other words, because here they can unite in the Word.

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

Modern Christians, especially those in the Western world, have generally been found wanting in the area of holiness of body. Gluttony and laziness, for example, were regarded by earlier Christians as sin. Today we may look on these as weaknesses of the will but certainly not sin. We even joke about our overeating and other indulgences instead of crying out to God in confession and repentance.

I do believe that leaders have to be held to a higher standard, especially Christian leaders. I put myself in that camp.

A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian Church has a heavy account to answer. Not by combining together, to protest injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved-but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God.

Isn't there any statute of limitation in things spiritual? I don't believe any large mind dwells on its sins, any more than on its virtues!