Bonhoeffer: Obedience and Faith

Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on the Word of Christ to call and give faith, to call and to empower obedience, is a timeless and relevant emphasis.  It is then a call to each of us to feast on God’s Word to inspire and strengthen our faith and it is a call to be a conduit if possible for that Word to reach others.  He says that “Discipleship is not an offer man makes to Christ.  It is only the call which creates the situation.” And that “…only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.”  Bonhoeffer ties faith and obedience together as an inseparable pair.  He states “Does not obedience follow faith as good fruit grows on a good tree?....If by that we mean that it is faith which justifies, and not the act of obedience, all well and good, for that is the essential and exceptional presupposition of all that follows.”  Beyond that, Bonhoeffer discourages a chronological distinction of first faith and then obedience, as if one must first have sufficient quantity and strength of faith before one can obey.  He says “From the point of view of justification it is necessary thus to separate them, but we must never lose sight of their essential unity.”  

According to Bonhoeffer, the only path to discipleship is pure obedience to the call of Jesus—the call to “Follow me, run along behind me!” Bonhoeffer draws a distinction between discipleship as adherence to Christ, versus Christology as a doctrinal system.  We follow a Person, we have a relationship with Christ Jesus, God-Man who lived perfect life, suffered, died, was buried and came to life on the third day.  “With an abstract idea it is possible to enter into a relations of formal knowledge, to become enthusiastic about it, and perhaps even to put it into practice; but it can never be followed in personal obedience.  Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.”  This statement could be read  as “the living Christ” referring to the resurrected Christ in whom we are made new, baptized into His death and brought into relationship and discipleship with Him; and to Christ as a real flesh-and-blood, historical Person and not a myth or legend. 

 “The living Christ” is both of those things—a real Person and the One through Whom we have new life. In 1 Corinthians 15: 14ff, Paul says “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.  And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith….And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.”  In Romans 5: 4 “We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”  James 2: 18 - 19 says “But someone will say ‘You have faith; I have deeds.’ Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.  You believe that there is one God.  Good!  Even the demons believe that—and shudder.”  

We have Christ, the resurrected Person who calls us to discipleship.  In our baptisms, we are buried and raised with His death and resurrection; we are called to new life, new life on earth and life eternal.  And while we are here on earth, as we answer the call of Christ our faith must be lived out through obedience, we must “show [our] faith by what [we] do.”  

For Martin Luther, raised in the shadow of Roman Catholic teachings of works-righteousness, burdened by the insufficiency of his own human efforts, the book of James was suspiciously close to heresy, nearly unworthy to be included in the Canon.  James’ emphasis on works as the demonstration of a living and active faith irritated the old wounds of Luther’s days spent huddled on the cold monastery floor in a hair shirt, seeking to justify himself in the eyes of an angry and demanding God.  But James’s inclusion in the totality of Scripture is for just such times as those Bonhoeffer saw—for days where “We Lutherans have gathered like eagles round the carcass of cheap grace….”.    The book of James challenges us to see faith not as an abstraction, but as living response to the call of discipleship.  Faith lived out involves obedience.  As Jesus Himself says in Matthew 25, when the Son of Man comes in glory He will separate the sheep from the goats based upon what they have done:  fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick and imprisoned.  Certainly these actions done apart from justifying faith in Christ are to no avail, good works do not in themselves justify; but the justified children of God, the true sheep, will live out obedient faith in love toward others.  

In this chapter on The Call to Discipleship, Bonhoeffer follows a train of thought which I am not certain I agree with.  He says that a true response to the call of Christ “…we must take certain definite steps.  The first, which follows the call, cuts the disciple off from his previous existence.  The call to follow at once produces a new situation. To stay in the old situation makes discipleship impossible.”  Bonhoeffer uses the examples of Mathew and Peter, who left their respective roles as tax collector and fisherman, as examples of the truest response to the call to discipleship.  “They must burn their boats and plunge into absolute insecurity in order to learn the demand and the gift of Christ.  Had Levi [Matthew] stayed at his post, Jesus might have been his present help in trouble, but not the Lord of his whole life.  In other words Levi would never have learnt to believe.”  Bonhoeffer cites Luke 9: 67ff in this discussion, where several people offer to follow Jesus but only on certain conditions—if there is significant security, after burying a father, after saying goodbye to family.  To Bonhoeffer, these people were unwilling to leave their initial situations and were therefore unwilling to become true disciples.  

Jesus certainly has a stern response to these:  “let the dead bury their own dead” and “no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of heaven.”  In Luke 14, Jesus says “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.  And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”  These are fierce and demanding words.  In my NIV text, the Luke 9 passage falls under the heading “The Cost of Following Jesus” and the Luke 14 text under the heading “The Cost of Being a Disciple.”  The meaning is very clear, just as Bonhoeffer says:  we must be willing to abandon all for the sake of the call of Christ Jesus. All human relationships, all human roles and responsibilities, all obligations and privileges.  This is a hard thing.  And so when I read what appears to be contradictory guidance in 1 Corinthians 7: 17ff, where Paul says “Nevertheless, each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him….Brothers, each man, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation God called him”, I must carefully judge my own heart:  am I reading this with a right heart, or reading it as an excuse to stay back and bury my dead?

I think that the wonderful words of Hebrews 12: 1, 2 can provide guidance:  “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  The call of Jesus is a call to self-examination:  what is hindering, what sin is entangling us?  The call to discipleship is a call to reject all sin.  If relationships, jobs or responsibilities are demanding a higher priority than Christ, if we are distracted by earthly obligations and pulled away from the call to be disciples, then we must turn away from those obligations, burn those boats and those bridges, and follow Christ.  Is this a call to abandon a covenantal marriage relationship?  Is this a call to abandon the command to honor father and mother, the Godly expectation to care for children?  Is this a call to shuffle off demands to work had and pay debts?  No, most emphatically it is not—and the call to discipleship should not be used as an excuse to sin against marriage, family, father and mother, neighbor or friend.  The call to discipleship is first and foremost a call to put Christ first, to make Him the priority and focus.  If we respond to that call in a way that dishonors His name, I believe that we are not responding truly and rightly to His call of discipleship.  Peter may have left his nets (Mark 1: 16, 17) but he did not abandon his wife and family (Matthew 8: 14, 15, Mark 1: 29-31).

Bonhoeffer outlines this call to discipleship as one of obedience, of actual works of love and service which distinctly follow the will and ways of Jesus Christ.  He rejects discipleship as impotent ideologies or devotion to doctrine, demanding instead that we live out our faith by producing good fruit.  He would most certainly agree with James 2: 26 “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”  A living faith does things—it is quick to listen, slow to speak; it holds its tongue; it refrains from unrighteous anger; it respects both poor and rich equally, never showing favoritism; it performs deeds in humility and wisdom; it rejects selfish ambition; it is peace-loving, considerate, submissive, merciful, impartial and sincere; it both rejects the known sin and does the known goodness; it confesses sin and prays diligently (reference the book of James).  Faith without such works is indeed dead, it is not discipleship.

1)      Consider your life as a Christian, one answering Christ’s call to living discipleship.  Are there aspects which you should “throw off”, boats you need to burn, dead you must leave behind??  Simultaneously, are there domains in your life—marriage, parenthood, duty as employee—where you are called to deeper obedience, to live out your faith as disciple of Christ, to be peace-loving, submissive, humble, and patient?

2)      Bonhoeffer makes a very clear point of discussing the faith which God gives freely in Christ, the faith which justifies us, as the essential starting point:  before that gift of faith, all works are indeed dead and useless.  But then he demands that we view faith and obedience as one thing, that faith must be lived out through actions of obedience.  How might we confuse these—to combine obedience with faith in such a way that obedience then becomes a requirement for salvation, a proof of “sufficient” faith—and how is this contrary to what both Bonhoeffer and Luther taught, and what is clearly taught by scripture?  See Ephesians 2: 1 – 10.

3)      The Lutheran tradition is definitely one which emphasizes right doctrine, theological clarity and sound teaching.  Various other Christian traditions place varying emphasis on doctrine and study versus “personal relationship with Christ.” Consider your own Christian tradition.  Are you drawn to an intellectual style of Christianity that may, at its worst, result in a kind of “armchair Christianity”, one which has an abstract belief which too rarely becomes physical obedience?  Or are you drawn to a style of Christianity which rejects doctrinal discussions as stuffy and irrelevant, and which may therefore place excess emphasis on personal feelings and interpretations, with the risk being that the true words and teachings of Christ are obscured or forgotten?  As Christians, we must never abandon the words of God in the entirety of Scripture; nor can we abandon the call to discipleship, the call to an obedient life.  How might you best achieve this balance?