Deitrich Bonhoeffer, pastor, teacher, theologian, and national activist was the writer of the most extensive work on discipleship, grace, suffering, and the cross than any other in the 20th century. “The Cost of Discipleship” became one of the most revealing works regarding the operation of grace toward salvation and the outworking of discipleship. A grace, which called upon him to demonstrate his knowledge and commitment to discipleship in Jesus Christ through trial, suffering, and eventually martyrdom. Bonhoeffer spent a period in prison prior to his death for participating in a coup to assassinate Hitler. It was there that he wrote works such as “Ethics”, and “Papers and Letters”. Prior to this, Bonhoeffer had openly spoken out against Hitler, the German Nazi regime, and the persecution of the Jews. He called upon the Christian leaders of Germany to actively resist German fascism becoming the founding member of the “Confessing Church”, a small group of individuals who withstood Nazism. Bonhoeffer’s path of discipleship would open the revelation of the role of nationalism and world order as a medium for spiritual evil that does and will ultimately act in rejection to God and the persecution of His elect; a mass illusion which brings on tyranny in the form of nationalist government and religion. Bonhoeffer’s release came not in the form of “The Big Three”, that penetrated Berlin in World War II just weeks before his death, but he suffered martyrdom by hanging for which he declared: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”
“‘The truth shall set you free.’ Not our deed, not our courage or strength, not our people, not our truth, but God’s truth alone. Why? Because to be free does not mean to be great in the world, to be free against our brothers and sisters, to be free against God; but it means to be free from ourselves, from our untruth, in which it seems I alone were there, as if I were the center of the world, to be free from the hatred with which I destroy God’s creation; to be free from myself to be free for others. God’s truth alone allows me to see others. It directs my attention, bent in on myself, to what is beyond and shows me the other person. And, as it does this, I experience the love and grace of God. It destroies our untruth and creates truth. It destories hatred and creates love. God’s truth is God’s love, and God’s love frees us from ourselves to be free for others. To be free means nothing else than to be in this love, and to be in this love, means nothing else than to be in God’s truth. The people who love, because they are freed through the truth of God, are the most revolutionary people on earth. They are the ones who upset all values; they are the explosives in human societies. Such people are the most dangerous.