The Supper doesn’t depend on the faithfulness of the Church. It depends on the faithfulness of Christ.
A rightly-oriented heart and a rightly-oriented love will consistently do what is best for God and best for our neighbor, which is why St. Augustine speaks of sin as a disordered love.
For Bonhoeffer, Christ crucified, and the cross of the Christian life were not of peripheral importance, but foundational.

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Because Jesus Taught It. By Flame. Concordia Publishing House. Paperback. 205 pages. List price: $17.99.
Few couples faced the kind of pressures they endured in their two decades of marriage prior to Martin’s death in 1546.
What I was missing—what so many are missing—is a Church that doesn’t just speak about Christ, but delivers him.
They were still praying, trusting, and hoping. Why? Because they knew who was with them and who was for them: the risen Christ.
The Church needs mystics again. Not fringe figures, but saints ablaze with love.
Jesus dove into the waters of baptism, plunging into our deepest need to rescue us.
Alligood is at pains to stress that glorification is not the result of our own efforts any more than sanctification or justification.
Forgiveness from Jesus is always surprising to us.
The Christ who rescues does not wait for you to be clean. He comes to clean you. He does not need your strength. He brings his own.
When you remember your baptism, you're not recalling a ritual. You're standing under a current of divine action that has not ceased to flow since the moment those baptismal waters hit your skin.
The women at the tomb were surprised by Easter. Amazed and filled with wonder at Jesus' Easter eucatastrophe. And so are we.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.