One of the heroes of faith of the 1900 for me is Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Reading through his writings/books and biographies, you may assume that he is the guy who didn’t struggle with sin especially with sexual sins.
Well, not so. He would actually laugh at that assumption if he were to be alive today. (He died at the age of 39, hanged on gallows, because he was one of those few courageous Christian men who secretly conspired to put Adolf Hitler down.)
Listen what Bonhoeffer says about the nature of hidden sin, what it does to our lives and what to do about it:
“Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the Gospel breaks into darkness. . . The sin must be brought into light.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer (February 04, 1906 – April 09, 1945, live only 39 years)
Don’t you love that? I do!
He nailed the truth down with just one paragraph, without wasting ink and words.
A life well-lived!
Because Bonhoeffer was leading an exemplary lifestyle, very far away from sexual sin, his words and writings had weight, worth and value. He was very vocal against Nazi dictatorship and “Hitler’s euthanasia program and genocidal persecution of the Jews.”
Because of his righteous living, his words were mightily and divinely moving throughout German and Europe and contributed greatly for the fall of Hitler’s regime.
Bonhoeffer must have taken to heart Paul’s message to Timothy:
“Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.” (1 Timothy 4:16)
Watch your life and doctrine!
Wow! A very simple life principle to follow to make our lives to mean something before God for the benefit of others, our words to have some weight so they destroy the work of the devil and our existence to influence Christians in such a way that they too learn how to watch their lives and doctrines. ///