This is an excerpt from Faith in the Face of Tyranny: An Examination of the Bethel Confession Proposed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer & Hermann Sasse in August 1933, written by Torbjörn Johansson and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2023).

As disciples of Jesus, our righteousness cannot be performed before others, because our righteousness was already performed by Jesus.

The waiting of Advent isn’t just for Christmas; it’s for God’s reversal of all sin and evil and his renewal of all things.

There is no true life and meaningful community apart from forgiveness.

An immense amount of ink has been spilled contesting and interpreting Bonhoeffer's significance as a figure of Christian history and a theologian of the church.

We do not live in the greatness of our own deeds. We boast in the greatness of one deed that God himself has done through Jesus Christ on the cross.

Bonhoeffer was in the unenviable position of trying to break a spell. The spell was the Nazi crisis, where the totalitarian state threatened the church, and yet to many, seemed to be saving the culture and nation from mortal dangers.

Bonhoeffer’s Advent preaching was carried out under the dark shadow of war yet within that night the word of promise sounds forth with radiant clarity. There is much in his preaching to inspire, deepen, and sharpen our proclamation in Advent 2020.

The biggest point Luther makes about the descent is not that Jesus triumphed over hell idle and unaffected, but that Jesus defeated hell by suffering hell away.

Bonhoeffer’s simple little book makes clear how privileged many of us are to enjoy the Communion of the Saints here on earth.

When Luther's barber, Peter Beskendorf, asked him how to pray, Luther wrote him an open letter that has become a classic expression of the "when, how, and what" of prayer. It is as instructive today as when it was first penned it in 1535.

The real power of his hymn comes from the fact that Bonhoeffer does not offer a rosy picture of life or any of the tropes so typical of cheap piety that tell us that everything is always right, that things happen for a reason, and that we should try to stay positive.