Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Whether we really have found God's peace will be shown by how we deal with the sufferings that will come upon us. There are many Christians who do indeed kneel before the cross of Jesus Christ, and yet reject and struggle against every tribulation in their own lives. They believe they love the cross of Christ, and yet they hate that cross in their own lives. And so in truth they hate the cross of Jesus Christ as well, and in truth despise that cross and try by any means possible to escape it. Those who acknowledge that they view suffering and tribulation in their own lives only as something hostile and evil can see from this very fact that they have not at all found peace with God. They have basically merely sought peace with the world, believing possibly that by means of the cross of Jesus Christ they might best come to terms with themselves and with all their questions, and thus find inner peace of the soul. They have used the cross, but not loved it. They have sought peace for their own sake. But when tribulation comes, that peace quickly flees them. It was not peace with God, for they hated the tribulation God sends.

Thus those who merely hate tribulation, renunciation, distress, defamation, imprisonment in their own lives, no matter how grandiosely they may otherwise speak about the cross, these people in reality hate the cross of Jesus and have not found peace with God. But those who love the cross of Jesus Christ, those who have genuinely found peace in it, now begin to lvoe even the tribulations in their lives, and ultimately will be able to say with scripture: "We also boast in our sufferings."

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"Tribulation produces patience, and patience produces experience, and experience produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us." But all this only for those who have found and who keep God's peace in Jesus Christ, and of whom our text now says: "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." Only those who are loved by God and who for that reason love God alone and above all else, those alone are permitted to speak thus. No, the gradation from tribulation to hope is no self-evident earthly truth. Luther said that one could very well put it quite differently, namely, that suffering produces impatience, and impatience produces obstinacy, and obstinacy produces despair, and despair disappoints us completely. Indeed, thus must it be if we lose God's peace, when we prefer an earthly peace with the world to peace with God, when we love the security of our lives more than we love God. Then must tribulation become our ruin.

[Sermon at evening worship, March 9, 1938, reprinted in "Meditations on the Cross" (Manfred Weber, ed.; Douglas W. Stott transl.)]