Part 2
ever does not seek the holy of holies, will never understand that God wants only one thing. He will never understand that in spite of the fact that in history God has appointed a bloody, diplomatic world government anchored in the right to property, God wants only one thing in the end: love without violence, freedom from all possessions and property rights, simple truthfulness and brotherly justice, community of all people without self-interest and prop erty – that is, the kingdom and the church.
Whoever is estranged from the heart of God will be just as per plexed when confronted by the mystery of the human heart. For that is where the likeness of God shall be revealed. Such people will never be able to grasp:
The greatest wonder in all creation,
Of time and space the masterpiece:
The human heart with its elation,
The heart with all its ecstasies.
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The Bible, which speaks of the heart in such a rich and profound way, is of all books the only one that can satisfy the inner life and fill the heart. If it is not seen superficially according to its letter but deeply in its heart and soul, it witnesses everywhere to the heart as the innermost mystery. It even goes so far as using the Hebrew expressions for "heart" and for "that which is within" as synonyms. In the Bible the heart is the antithesis of superficiality and pretense. What penetrates to the inmost depths does not sim ply stay on the surface.
What comes from the inmost depths is the noblest and sincerest of all. If our heart is corrupt, nothing we touch remains incorrupt.
But the outer life resists the inner life and strives against it. There is seldom harmony between them.
A pure, creative spirit expresses what is within very clearly and intelligibly by outward and visible signs. An impure and untruthful spirit, on the other hand, misuses the outward expression to falsify the true state of affairs. Then the outward appearance is there only to hide what is within, as public economy and politics reveal so painfully in war and in peace.
We in our days have had to look on with horror while spirits who have fallen prey to hate and hostility, of whatever party or nation, have practiced the most hateful misuse of the spoken, written, and printed word. They all, every one of them, practice it to this day, dishonestly exaggerating and inventing failures and mistakes in the enemy's camp, and, just as much, exaggerating and inventing ad vantages and elements of truth in the home camp. Every honest person must be warned of the daily flood of printed matter: Cave canem! Here you will get barked at and bitten; there is no sense, no understanding, and no insight here because there is no justice. Pass by! Words desecrate the truth! Here the heart is cloaked in lies.
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The scriptures call the heart the part hidden in the inner being.
The thought is even intensified by terms like the "inmost" heart and the "depths" of the heart. The secrets of the heart are known to the scriptures. In the scriptures, anyone is marked as unhappy who has to hide in an armor of lies and dishonesty in order to appear different from what he or she truly is. Whoever gets entangled in hypocrisy and deceit cannot open up and pour out his or her heart even before God – the very one who wants to make the heart glad because he loves it and wants to give it truth and genuineness.
Ultimately, however, our innermost being cannot be hidden – we must do what is in our heart. And even if we do not want to admit it, our deeds will finally reveal whether our hearts are right or wrong.
War and postwar times have brought surprises for many of us: they should be stamped on our hearts as unforgettable warnings.
We must not be indifferent to the abysses that have yawned in front of us: impure and unbridled passions, boundless lies and deceptions, the unrestrained fury of murder and looting, the love less triumph of ruthless profiteering, the renewed increase of social injustice and oppressions, and the deception of class hatred and racism! All that, and still more, breaks out with the most fear some violence in war and in the revolutions and violent repression that often follow it, with inflation and with heated political opin ions. The shock of these things must be engraved unforgettably on our memory. The dreadful nucleus of these events is something we have to recognize even when it tries to hide behind the glittering armor of the most idealistic words and goals. Not the program but the deed discloses what powers drive the heart on and control it.
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All we do is bound to be powerless and evil if the heart is parched and diseased, burdened and faint, or worst of all, if it is hostile, filled with the impure fires and poisonous smoke of blind hate.
Only an inner life that is recollected and that lives in the strength of concentrated peace, only a harmonious heart that does not disintegrate in quarrels and strife, can give proof of strength to act. For only good works are constructive. Everything else is destructive. We can see outward effects, but God tests and knows the inner recesses of the heart. He wants to lead our hearts away from murderous demolition to the living work of building up. He alone knows how to guide them, just as we guide streams of running water to one place or another in our gardens. God wants to let all hearts flow together into one great garden, into the king dom of his unity, love, and justice, where all do what is good because their hearts move them to it and the Spirit leads them and urges them on.
The Bible makes the heart responsible for bringing something new to us. As the Bible sees it, everything of significance is decided in the inner recesses of the heart. From the heart flow not only the streams of blood that fill our veins –no, also the pure winds and waters of the Spirit. That can be seen in the contrasting statements about the heart in prophetic and apostolic writings: what defiles the heart is not what enters it from without but what comes from within, from the inner being. It is false to maintain that our nature can be influenced by food taken in by the body or by hygiene or gymnastics. This is in distinct opposition to the word and life of Jesus. It leads to this thoughtless and deceptive saying: "A man is what he eats," set up in opposition to the truth of Jesus. Those who believe this have had to realize only too often that the defilement of our inner being lies deeper than in eating and drinking. The true
4 2 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L food, the food of the spirit, remains decisive, though to be sure the abuse of eating and drinking through luxurious living can also burden the heart.
In truth it is quite the other way round: a luxurious and volup tuous life has its origin in the heart. What we do, we are. There are deeper signs of this than diets and rules of hygiene. As long as we think first and foremost of our health and our own well-being, we remain unredeemed, with a sick and self-seeking heart. Because we love our life, we lose it. Only when we give it up, do we find it.
What comes to light out of the heart is of vital significance.
Every sort of idolatry will inevitably be exposed. The words uttered by the mouth (outward speech) come from the overflowing of the heart (the inner being). What we speak about, we are – that is, of course, provided we are speaking from our hearts. Nevertheless, the sincerity or insincerity of our words cannot be hidden in the long run. A watchful spirit, clearly discerning the spirits, hears the tones of the heart and sees the lights of the soul. All empty talk is useless, however lofty the words. What use is all outward service to God if our inner being, our heart, stays at a distance? Only what we do for the Lord with all our heart has any value. What point is there in letting our feet take paths and steps if our hearts do not go along too? All that is done and carried out in imagined strength remains a mere nothing if the living heart does not beat and pulse in it. As long as our heart stays quick and alive, even the weakest, those incapable of productive work, can have the strongest influ ence. The heart is the inner core that does not rest even when the outer person is inactive. God does not look at outward appearance but at the heart.
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Strength and weakness lie in our innermost being. Although our inner attitude can be hidden or disguised on the outside, it never theless makes all the difference to our character. Only what passes through one heart to another has any value or strength, because it comes from the heart. Whoever has experienced how complete or almost complete strangers open their innermost hearts to one another will feel again and again the genuine heartbeat in each true word and turn away from empty words in which the heart does not speak.
The living church receives its unity and unanimity from the continual outpouring of the Spirit. It is there that the harmony of all hearts reaches its climax, for there all have become one heart and one soul. And this they will be over and over again, every time they believe in the Holy Spirit.
Whoever wants to forgive with the mouth only or preach with the lips can only disappoint us. "A preacher must have a heart on fire before preaching." With these words Francis of Assisi revealed the secret of his fruitful life. "For anything that is to move hearts must come straight from the heart." That is what Phorkyras demands in Goethe's Faust.
The heart is rich in strength. What a wealth and diversity of lively emotions are embedded in the heart! Many people associate the heart only with feelings. And indeed, language does not go far wrong when it speaks so often of the emotional life as the heart's affair. The best and deepest feelings are seated in our innermost being, but just as much our most wicked and harmful ones.
All true joy comes from the heart and fills it with jubilant exulta tion or quiet happiness. All genuinely good deeds touch the heart.
Every joyful hope has its life in the heart. The refreshing of the 4 4 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L spirit, and not only that but also the refreshing of body and soul, is a gift for the inner life, for the heart. For the heart is grateful for every consolation that offers bread and not stones. The heart really does have to fight against fear and unrest, pain and sadness.
Our times have shown us all too clearly that the heart does not burn with love and joy only. All too often it plunges into the consuming fires of discontent and hate. We must be surprised to the point of being horrified how for one reason after another passion causes the heart to flare up in rage and distress! What a catastrophe it would be for the heart if it were to exhaust all its wealth on its conflicting feelings! And how deluding these storms are even though they are often only big enough to fill a teacup!
Strong impressions produce shaking emotions. Miserable lusts cramp the heart. Deep emotion alternates with very petty feelings.
It can happen that unclarified, unconscious, and subconscious feelings lead to something good. But often they veil urges that are dangerously apathetic and can lead the heart to destruction.
It is not true that the heart can only feel. No, the heart as the inner core is more than feeling: it is intention and will. It is the seat of all deep thoughts, which have meaning only if they move our inner being. "Great thoughts come from the heart." Everything that is great seeks the living core. The heart is not only inner feeling: it is also inner thought. There is a speaking and talking going on in the heart that tries to bring inner clarity to all its thinking. Reason is not alien to the heart. To be sure, there are some unreasonable hearts who by their errors show nothing but folly. But what the sensible and understanding heart thinks out is wisdom. It understands how to know and recognize the best counsel. Just in the inconceivably heavy things that war and its 4 5 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L historical consequences bring upon us all, just in the incalculable and unfathomable tasks that confront us, the heart needs the greatest and deepest thoughts. These God alone can give.
There are indeed thoughts that will always be alien to the heart.
There are indeed hearts that hate thinking. But without a certain rich and deep fusion of thoughts there is no fruitful inner life. The whole wealth of life intended for the heart is available to it only when the heart is ready to open itself to the deepest thinking and reflection. It is in the nature of the heart to think and reflect.
"Your heart is you yourself. Blessed are you if understanding always dwells in your heart." Only the consecrated thoughts of a dedicated life lead to this deep understanding. True understanding is given solely in the thoughts of God, which turn his will into the holy "thou shalt."
The effect that thoughts have on the heart's feelings provides a certain criterion of their value, though not always an infallible one.
As Ruskin expressed it: "Literature, art, science – they are all fruitless and worse than fruitless if they do not enable us to be glad, and glad of heart at that." A heart that is truly alive passes a kind of higher judgment about those intellectual ideas that cannot fit into our life at the moment, and perhaps never will. "Like a sun, the heart goes through our thoughts and on its way extinguishes one constellation after another!" Jean Paul saw his inner life before him in this picture. All knowledge related only to the thinking brain is dead, including mere intellectual knowledge of biblical things. Such knowledge brings life into deadly danger unless the heart takes a stand and unless it is so moved and alive that it is capable of making a choice between light and darkness, bright and dark rays, evil stars and good stars. Only thoughts that 4 6 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L have glowing warmth and strength penetrate a pure heart and stream out from it again. Mirza-Schaffy's search for a completely integrated inwardness comes to expression when he proclaims:
Head without heart breeds bad blood;
Heart without head is still no good.
For joy and blessing to last forever,
Heart and head must go together.*
This cooperation of two instruments demands an inner energy to hold together what so often threatens to disintegrate. No heart is without energy. Yes, the heart is will. God's heart – being love – is the will to gather, the will for his kingdom. The heart of Jesus wants to gather everything that is to be united in his church: in the same way, the human heart that is healed in him is the clarified will to gather and unite. If our inner being is not to let the precious wealth of truly great thoughts go rushing by, we must have a heart with a will that is active and glowing, able to accept words of truth and hold on to them firmly, just as Mary did. A will made weak by brooding and a nature ruled by feelings have never yet been ca pable of anything great. Faith received the word of the Holy Spirit into the heart. This is the only way the word can penetrate our life.
The ultimate nature of the heart is in fact its inner urge, and its yet deeper will. This will is able to comprehend all that is said and to transform it into dynamic life values. All intentions and wishes have their root in the heart. There is not only desire in the heart: deeper than that lie its intentions and resolutions. With its will, the heart holds on to the objects of its love and devotion. It is the inner disposition, the deeper direction of will, that makes the character of the heart what it is. Where our treasure is – the treasure that fills our inner life – there is our heart also.
4 7 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L "There is something in every character that will not let itself be broken, that forms its backbone."* This backbone that is inwardly so firm and stable is the moral, loving, and uniting will. Without a decided will there is no character. Character is moral order. It is all the elements of the heart, ordered according to the laws of divine and human morality, according to the will to unity, and therefore in the active spirit of pure and warm love. The backbone of this order is the will. As will, the heart is the school of character. True, it needs the stream of the world in order to grow strong. The will has to prove itself in work that is a product of active love by help ing to build up a life consistent with the unity it aims at. It is steeled for this task in the hard struggle against all the powers op posed to unity. But if our will is not rooted in our inmost being, in our heart, we will be swept downward with the stream.
If it is true that character depends on personality, then personality has its life and strength in the inner will. Only in the inmost recesses of the heart do we become truly free. It is only there that we take a decisive attitude, one that means either moral stability or spineless instability. It is the direction the inner atti tude takes that makes the personality. As long as this direction seeks nothing but itself, it will lead the personality astray. Person ality is "the greatest happiness of earth's children" only when the will no longer seeks itself but comes into action and sets to work for what is greatest of all – God's unity in his kingdom and his church.
In the end, only deeds reveal the inner attitude of the heart. Only those actions that require the concentration of all the heart's energies can be called deeds. The true deed unites all genuine
4 8 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L powers of each individual, bringing togetherness and community to all: the kingdom of God among us is the concentration of all powers in united deed. Only when we do not seek our own advantage but that of another are our deeds in keeping with the powers of God's spirit at work in us: when in our deeds we sacrifice our own life so that community life may be established in unity, purity, truth, and righteousness.
The greatest deed of the strongest heart was accomplished by Jesus. When he died on the cross, his resolute determination ac complished it. Here an energy of the will found nowhere else – a fire of love, a steadfastness in carrying out God's perfect will – is revealed. Christ's struggle in Geth-semane and his cry of God forsakenness on the cross give a significant glimpse into what willpower was necessary for the heart of the Son of Man not to be broken by the anguish of his pain. Yet his love remained strong and unbroken till the end. In the very torment of death, the divine life in this heart was marked by a will to unity, consummation of the work of unification, trust in the Father, prayer for his enemies, concern for a criminal, tender care for his own, and the commend ing of his spirit into the hands of the Father.
Just before that, Jesus' High-Priestly Prayer, as the profoundest speaking of any heart, had proclaimed unity to be the essence of his will. "May they all be one as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, so that in this – their being one – the world may know and believe that thou hast sent me!" The farewell words of Jesus – those words with such an inexhaustible wealth of thought, spoken to those who were his disciples in community and missionary work – also revealed the spirit of this relationship of unity. This spirit, the Holy Spirit, was revealed to be the living representative
4 9 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L of Jesus Christ, the advocate of his kingdom and his church, the power that thoroughly overwhelms in the conviction that the love that comes from unity is the truth. The spirit of truth is the one who calls to mind every word that Jesus said, including his last words, which prophesy the approaching kingdom of divine unity. It is the quickening breath of life who communicates the content and form of the future kingdom for us today. Last but not least, the significant symbolism of the Last Supper proclaims the death of Jesus as atonement and liberation; it proclaims his death as the liv ing creation of the new body of Christ, which shall bring the whole of life into perfect unity.
All this shows, in a profound wealth of feeling and will, the in vincible power of God's thoughts in Jesus Christ, the power to ac complish this deed, the most dynamic deed that ever a heart ac complished. As a revelation of God, this deed of Jesus demonstrates the concentration of all powers on the one goal that is their task.
And this goal is nothing more or less than peace, reconciliation, and unity!
The heart is the inner character. In Jesus it is so firm and clear that by sacrificing his life he accomplishes the greatest deed of lib eration, uniting, and gathering that can ever be imagined. In Jesus, the accomplished deed reveals his inner perfection. In all of us, the nature of our deeds reveals our heart. Deeds reveal the character of the heart. If the heart is not clear and undivided – "single," as Jesus puts it –then it is weak, flabby, and indolent, incapable of ac cepting God's will, of making important decisions, or of taking strong action. That is the reason why Jesus attached the greatest significance to singleness of heart, simplicity, unity, solidarity, and decisiveness. Purity of heart is nothing else than absolute integrity, 5 0 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L which can overcome desires that enervate and divide. Determined single-heartedness is what the heart needs in order to be receptive, truthful and upright, confident and brave, firm and strong.
Yet the spirit of Jesus is seldom accepted. The strength of charac ter that comes from him is seldom achieved. Weakness and dividedness of heart are to blame. How often the heart tries to overcome its own cowardice and faintheartedness through cold pride! The divisive callousness of pride is a weakness that destroys everything, making the inner self numb and stubborn, yet torn and disrupted too. The self-will that splits and divides itself has an arro gance that is the enemy of the love of God.
The heart tries in vain to close itself to the knowledge that it is too weak, too rotten and wicked, too disunited, too divided, and too hostile to help itself. For all its blindness to its own nature, and against its own will, time after time the heart has to uncover pride and arrogance, wickedness and cunning, ruthlessness and deceit, as the self-will and self-interest that continually divide it. Debasement of the heart can go so far in rigid obstinacy that all pretense comes to an end: God is tempted and cursed until darkness fills the heart's inmost recesses.
The heart, however, longs for the opposite – for a development of the inner life that leads to honest self-recognition, singlehearted simplicity, and unfeigned humility. In this spirit of modesty, the consciousness of one's own smallness unites with the divine call to true greatness. Such a development, brought about by God, requires a penetrating insight into everything that is base in one's own heart, an insight that in fact means a revolution in the heart. No one has an innocent heart when faced with this radical
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Consciousness of guilt and unfulfilled longing for God, however, may not only soften the heart but positively tear it apart and crush it. Many people have shattering things to say about the consuming fire of this longing of the heart. Many call it the deepest thing in themselves, the thing they want to gain a glimpse into:
In my heart there burns an eternal lamp,
quiet and steady;
only once in a while it flares up high,
rises to a flame,
to a blazing fire
raging and consuming and destroying –
then I summon all my energy,
only one wish have I then,
only one hope, only one thought – and the eternal flame flickers and smokes for a long, long time until it is appeased and becomes quiet: my eternal longing!*
The blazing flame of longing is certainly there, but it will have to flicker, restless and unappeased and impure, until the heart submits to the inner influence of the sharp, clarifying word and cutting wind of the spirit of God. Then the smoky blaze can give way to the perfect light of the "Christ in us." Nevertheless, because the heart is as weak as it is obstinate and only too used to its own divided
5 2 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L and disrupted state, it will not surrender lightly. It tries by every possible means to defend itself. It tries passionately to cling to self-chosen, human ideals meant to bolster its self-will and hostile self-assertion – either alone or in community with equally selfish kindred hearts. But it is all in vain, even though the heart can cover up or postpone the decisive battle for a long time.
All attempts to lift the heart up in human, emotional enthusiasm for some god other than the Father of Jesus Christ are made in vain.
In spite of every effort, all that the natural state of the human heart reveals is how far it has fallen away from God. Today more than ever this is unintentionally revealed by many movements.
Inflamed hearts give rise to movements that use hatred, injustice, and godlessness to pursue the goal of unity and social justice – but in vain. Other movements pay homage (supposedly patriotic but in reality hostile and restricted) to a deity opposed to the living God – a deity alien to Christ and inimical to him.
The veil has to fall away. It darkens the heart and restricts it to itself or to groups bound together by blood ties or a common lot.
Nothing must hinder the outlook toward God. God, the Father of Jesus Christ, can be seen only by looking with a resolute and unfaltering heart toward the perfect unity of his kingdom, a unity free from all arbitrary boundaries, its one goal an all-embracing justice – the result of the divine joy of perfect love to friend and foe. This free outlook presupposes and demands a complete liberation of the heart from every false emotional tie, yes, a complete change of heart, the new birth brought about by the Holy Spirit.
The heart must not be allowed to remain as it is. It must experi ence the healing transformation that frees it from all rank and impure growth, all egotistical isolation. If it wants to be really free, the heart must be circumcised – pruned – and the weedy growth of 5 3 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L self-will and self-glorification around it must be thinned out and cast away.
The Odes of Solomon, an early Christian collection of hymns from the second century, witness in a profound way to this circumcision of the heart: My heart was circumcised and its flower appeared. Grace sprang up in it, And brought forth fruit for the Lord. For the Most High cut me by his Holy Spirit And opened my reins toward him. He filled me in his love And his circumcision became my salvation – I hastened on the way of his peace, On the way of truth. From beginning to end I received his knowledge. I was firmly established on the rock of truth, Where he himself set me up. The Lord renewed me with his raiment And created me by his light. From above he refreshed me with immortality So I became like a land That blossoms and rejoices in its fruit. Like the sun upon the face of the earth, The Lord gave light to mine eyes, And my face received the dew; My breath delighted in the precious odors of the Lord. He led me into his paradise, Where the pleasure of the Lord abounds. I threw myself before the Lord For the sake of his glory, and I said: "Blessed are they that are planted in thy land, 5 4 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L
That have a place in thy paradise,
That grow like the growth of thy trees
And have stepped from darkness into light!
Behold, all thy workers are fair And do good works. From unkindness they turn to the strength of thy love. They cast off the bitterness of the trees When they were planted in thy land. For there is much room in thy paradise, And there is nothing that is useless therein, But everything is filled with thy fruits!"
Therefore Fichte said: "As long as we want to be something for our own sake, our true nature and our true life cannot develop in us, and for this very reason we also remain cut off from blessedness."
Fichte sees all selfishly isolated existence quite rightly as nonexist ence, deadly restriction, cut off from the only true existence. It is only in blessed community with the divine being that the greatest inner freedom can exist, replacing the unhappiness of sensual selflove and the insensitivity of moralistic legalism. Circumscribed selflove and heartless legalism are the enemies of the gospel of unity and freedom. The true freedom of a heart ruled by God does away with superficial legalism. An inner urge that comes from perfect love replaces it: the impulse of the Holy Spirit, leading to the divine order of a common life in complete community. Here all isolation and all arbitrary limitations are thoroughly overcome.
Through the unity of the Holy Spirit, the church and the kingdom are proved to be the only true existence, the only true life. For it is God's love that reveals itself in the unity of his church and his kingdom.
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This experience of God is a decisive enrichment of the inner life.
Without it, even the most gifted heart starves inwardly. The inner acceptance of the divine means rebirth for a dead heart, so that it then becomes a new, different heart. It cannot be a good and upright heart until it has experienced a complete turning, a whole hearted conversion that leads away from false narrowness within its own self to true breadth, to the experience of God, who is greater than our hearts. The heart needs to be redeemed from its stubborn self-life. Only in community with the perfect life can it be restored to health. The perfect life is love. The omnipotent breadth and depth of God's greatness is revealed as love. In Christ and his spirit, a complete uniting (as the church and the kingdom) is brought so near to us by love that together we are able to go this way of love.
On the path of faith, the heart is led away from the inner resistance it puts up against perfect love, and closer and closer to openhearted, voluntary obedience. The obedience that springs from faith opens up to the heart of God and to the heart of his kingdom. It is only through experiencing the free gift of God's love that the human heart can be purified of its stubbornness and despair. Only unfeigned love from the purest spheres can oust those hostile elements that are the opposite of love: self-will, wrapped up in itself, and impure passion of all kinds that destroys root and branch its own life-energy as well as that of its victims.
The gift that comes from the purifying and liberating love of the Most High is grace. In this one short word, the Bible encompasses the wealth of God's heart, which wants to give itself to us in love.
It is in grace that God draws near to us. The hardship of our times and the abundance of tasks it brings show us how forlorn we are in 5 6 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L the world, and how helpless, without God. In judgment, grace becomes the deepest need of our hearts. It is only through the free, communal gift of the Holy Spirit to his church that the hardship of our times becomes an invigorating mineral bath, immersing us in the salty strength of the future kingdom of God. Then, in complete community, we can carry out here and now the tasks of justice. The greater the need and distress, the nearer draws the kingdom of God.
The nature of grace is made clear in the bitter fate of the one who was crucified, in the way he sacrificed himself completely to the greatest of all tasks. When the heart experiences the freeing power of his death, scripture calls it being sprinkled with the blood of the redeemer. The heart, taking firm hold of unity with Christ through his death, puts the whole of life into militant action against the powers that put Jesus to death. Consequently, this bap tism of blood means not only being ready to die for him, but some thing even more immediate – being prepared time and again to risk life itself in the fight against powers that oppose the kingdom of God. For us there is no other basis for true peace of heart than this fight to the bitter end. Right to the point of death by martyrdom, the strength for this fight comes from unity with Christ in his death, from the direct nearness of God's heart. Only the cross brings perfect trust in God. Here, in the sharpest judgment of his wrath over all that is evil, God reveals loving grace to all as his innermost nature.
Through his spirit, God himself lives in a heart united in this way with the cross. His love is poured out in it. In the midst of murder ous opponents of peace and justice, a heart filled like this remains joyful in love, in a love that includes all enemies. To this joy and 5 7 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L this love the martyrs of both early Christianity and the radical
Reformation have testified a thousandfold. This fundamental strengthening of character, proven at that time in death, lets the heart unfold all its powers-to-be with the zeal of inner fire in order that in life as in death they may make an impact on the whole world.
The reason Christ died for all was so that those who live may no longer live for themselves but for him who died and rose again for their sakes (2 Cor. 5:15). That the whole of life up to the very brink of death is meant here – life with all its capabilities and activities – is shown by the other word of the same apostle of Jesus Christ.
According to this word, the same people who have just previously let themselves be used in the service of unrighteousness from now on give themselves to God in the service of righteousness (Rom.
6:13, 19). For this is the only way the work of the Holy Spirit can and will be continually built up anew as it once was in Jerusalem, no matter how often Jerusalem is destroyed and no matter how often his church is violently driven apart.
Yet this wealth of power and effective action up to the very threshold of death cannot be won unless complete inner concen tration and perfect accord prevail in the heart, as in the primitive church. We know from the history of war that the strongest politi cal power is nothing but a helpless mass of people if a united will is lacking or has been lost. Such was the case with Germany in World
War I. Such was the experience of cities and countries in times of siege. And so, too, the Protestant princes and cities were once "wonderfully favored by circumstances" for the Smalkaldic War: never, since the time of the emperors of Hohenstaufen and the Salian emperors, had the tribes of North and South Germany united in such a compact mass against the crown. At that time too, a war
5 8 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L council torn by conflicting interests was to blame for the inevitable catastrophe of defeat.
Consequently, only when the heart refuses to let opposing inter ests split it apart can even the richest powers and gifts be a help and blessing to it. If the heart wants to win the victories of a faith that has courage unto death, it needs the wholehearted decisive ness of a unified will. We cannot serve two masters at once. We cannot pursue two ideals. We cannot seek two goals in two direc tions. The kingdom of God, as the final kingdom, does not tolerate in any heart any other kingdom besides itself. The way of Jesus is the only way that knows no byways, no wrong ways, and no devious ways. However many roads may lead to Rome or anywhere else – there is only one kingdom, there is only one way: the complete uniting of all believers in all the activity that goes on in the heart and in life as a whole. Through the decisive outpouring of the Holy Spirit, all believers became so much one heart and one soul that they proved the uniting of all their powers, not only in the word of the apostles and in prayer, but also in the breaking of bread and in community – in full community of goods too.
Only when there is an integrated will – one that is decided for God and united with all similar wills – can the heart profess to seek
God and his kingdom. He will reveal himself powerfully only through those who have turned an undivided heart toward him. An undivided heart does not tolerate a divided life. Only he is truly with God who surrenders to him as his king with all his thoughts and feelings, all his powers, gifts, and goods in order to live truly for God –an integrated character with an integrated life. The whole heart has to be converted before it is possible to follow him. Where the whole heart is turned toward him, it means that a life that is 5 9 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L undivided (with all the powers of the spirit and all the wealth and capacities of soul and body) devotes every area of its existence to his rulership and to the church. That includes professional and vo cational activity with all the skills involved in it; it includes all worldly belongings and all temporal possessions.
Unless we stand firmly with God, we cannot carry out our service to him; only when we love him heart and soul can we do his will in everything. Not one of us can do this in our own strength. If we are going to give all our strength and goods, we need strength from the Holy Spirit. It does not proceed from us. It is given to us in the word of the apostles, the community of prayer, and the breaking of bread. Whoever knows what it is to pray from a simple, undivided heart becomes grateful to God for his works and words and finds his happiness in worshiping the greatness of God and doing his will.
Nothing will be impossible to one who prays this kind of prayer, the prayer that listens to God with heart and soul. Such prayer gives the inner life the boundless wealth of the truth of God. It leads the heart to the knowledge that truth is unshakable because it is the very essence of life. It has the power to accomplish everything. The impossible becomes possible. Unity is given a place in a torn world.
Community in the fullest sense is created and built up, making the unity of God's spirit shine out in truth and deed as the church, the city on the hill.
If we want to wage the spiritual wars of Jehovah and win the land for him, we must acclaim him with our whole heart! When his will rules in our heart, he will give our inner being a wealth of ex perience and action that it can attain only under his rulership.
When our heart is ruled by Jesus Christ as our master, then and only then will we be equipped and qualified for the great tasks that will 6 0 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L inevitably confront us in the difficulties of these times and the hardships of the future. These tasks are nothing less than a call to the kingdom of God and the tasks of his church.
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Soul and Spirit
The question of life and death is bound to concern us more than ever before: war has brought death to so many who were in the prime of life. Crime against life has increased atrociously, also crime against unborn children. The question of life and soul is one that people have wrestled with throughout the ages, but the present time is so serious that it should make everything else fall into the background. Then we can concentrate fully on what soul, spirit, and life mean to us.
Is it not an astonishing fact that death overcomes life? Children cannot understand death. Least of all can they see how it is pos sible to kill people in the service of a higher cause. But even apart from this, to children the thought that human life can one day come to an end is always unreal –contrary to the truth. The unnatu ralness of dying is too remote from the simplicity of their affirma tion of life. For the same reason, the heathen of old with their zest for life believed in the immortality of the soul. Goethe, too, who was very much akin to them, said "Those who have no hope for a life beyond are dead to this life as well." Life itself witnesses to its own invincible power. Hope is the hallmark of all living things.
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As long as we want to deny that life is eternal, everything that belongs to life remains cloaked in tormenting riddles. Eternity re mains the deepest longing of the human spirit. When we know that we are immortal, everything we experience is great and under standable; when we see ourselves as mortal, it all becomes dark and futile. If there is no other future and no other world (which is bound to be victorious because it is the better world), then the in justice that prevails makes nonsense of human existence by giving final victory to "the worst of all possible worlds."
In the inner and outer circumstances of life, every living person can learn to recognize this other world. Fichte has declared that we only need to rise to the consciousness of a pure, moral character to find out who we ourselves are, to find out that this globe with all its glories, this sun and the thousands of thousands of suns that surround it, this whole immense universe at the mere thought of which our sentient soul quakes and trembles – that all this is noth ing but a dim reflection in mortal eyes of our own eternal exist ence, hidden within us, to be unfolded throughout all eternity.
And the other way round, this is the truth given to people since primeval times: our so very small world can be nothing else than a likeness – bungled, it is true, but nevertheless recognizable – of a bigger, truer, and more genuine world without limits of time and space. Our small world belongs to this bigger one. It must corre spond to it once again. For all of us, as Kant has said, there is the moral code within us and the starry heavens above us to bring home a living intimation of this fact of eternity.*
Our life has its roots in eternity. Its nature presumes imperish ability. In space, the human spirit goes far beyond all comprehen
6 3 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L sible limits. And similarly, the absoluteness of the moral demands it makes knows no limit. The most certain of all certainties known by our spirit is this: that the ray of truth, the power of life, and the demand of the holy "thou shalt" keeps on coming to us from a living world that lies beyond all space and nevertheless embraces all space. With this energy that comes from absolute authority, the human spirit follows the stream of time long before the beginning and far beyond the end, going outside all boundaries. This is the spirit's most crying need: the origin of all things before the begin ning of time and the goal of the future at the end of time.
The thirsting soul pants for its original fountainhead and for its estuary ahead. Once awakened to consciousness of its true self and its divine destiny, it sees in death an enemy of life – an unnatural enemy that fights against the very nature of things. And it sees the same in everything else that tries to sully and destroy the clarity and purity of the eternal.
Everything in our present time and in our earthly space that opposes the soul's holy "thou must" and "thou shalt" must and shall be overcome (as the soul ultimately believes it will be) by the kingdom of God at the end of all ages and beyond all earthly things.
The "heavenly kingdom" of the other world intervenes in temporal and earthly life as the power of the future world. It wants to trans form life here and now according to the image of what is beyond and to come. This happens as soon as and as long as the soul lets faith rule in it, whenever and wherever that may be.
This other life, which is already possible here and now, means freedom for the soul. But there will never be any such soaring of a free soul as long as an atmosphere antagonistic to life robs it of its breath, obscuring its view into the eternal and everlasting.
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The freedom and power of a believing soul goes so far that it expects – with the prophetic spirit – a holy transformation to justice and unity. It expects this also for every detail of material existence in space and time. It is in the hope of the kingdom of God that the soul discovers its life. To the soul, the end of all the ways of God is unity in a tangible and visible form. For that reason, the Bible traces the death of the body back to the fact that sin as sepa ration – as division and isolation – has brought a fatal breach into the living cohesion of creation. To the soul, evil is a power hostile to life, one that carries with it the danger of eternal death by sepa ration from God and people from each other. Sin is crime against life and love. That was the reason why the first son born to those human beings who separated themselves from God inevitably became his brother's murderer.
Nevertheless, the ancient scriptures of truth maintain that it is impossible to extinguish the life that God has given out of his own nature. From generation to generation, physical death comes to everyone as a consequence of separation from God. The body does indeed die when the soul leaves it. The body that is left behind without the soul must fall to dust. Death can never deny that its nature is to separate by division and disintegration. This it has proved since the very beginning through man's separation from God. Yet death is not annihilation.
The writings of both the Old Testament and the New Testament speak again and again about the souls of the dead. Every living soul has a capacity for future life. All vital movements of humankind look to the future. Whenever the soul comes to new life in the Spirit, it waits for God's future. And even if the soul cannot believe wholeheartedly in the coming kingdom, faith tries to salvage this 6 5 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L or that small fragment of the world-to-come and then clings to it all the more passionately. If people are not yet ready to fight and die for the final kingdom of love and justice, they cling to a com munistic state of the future or to a nationalist government of patriotic and racial alliance. And in the same way, a remnant of faith in immortality and the other world emerges again and again, even in the most unbelieving, and this they can never lose entirely.
Something in our being is meant to continue as an active force forever. Our divine home calls us homeward. The spirit wants to return to God, in whom it has its origin. And though God himself is not yet recognized, there is at least an attempt to represent a little of his infinite significance even when it is done by idolatry.
Today we have every reason to recall the faith in eternity and infinity that characterized the early Christians. If we want truth and seek it regardless of the unfounded prejudices of our time, we must and will recognize that here among the early Christians a glimpse into ultimate reality is given. In the face of this reality, no living soul can maintain its opposition. For here the soul is face to face with the life-giving spirit of Jesus Christ. Whoever believes in Jesus will live even through death. And the day is coming when they will awake and arise to a perfect life in an immortal body.
The spirits of the just who have departed this life are at rest in the living God. They wait for the day of his future. The character of this perfect life in the kingdom of God is shown by the parable of the wedding and its joyful uniting, by the comparison with the meal of fellowship, and by the establishment of the thrones (Rev.
20:4); it is a life ruled by a love and a justice that bring about com plete unity. In this kingdom, at the end of all things, the one Holy
Spirit will master and pervade everything. What constitutes life
6 6 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L now is man's soul (that is, the life) in the blood (Lev. 17:11, 14), but then it will be his spirit. Instead of ruling over the soul's human body, the spirit will rule over a spiritual body.
In the kingdom, the Holy Spirit takes the place of the coursing blood. The Spirit does away with fluctuating emotional ties and puts in their place a unity kept constantly alive, a unity that is just as active as it is perfectly clear. In such a body of unity, those who are at all times united in God and serve him under his rulership live in a radically different way from those who are far away from their master and are thus headed toward ruin, body and soul. Because these last have rejected the unity of life, they themselves have chosen death and separation. But even this second death cannot mean annihilation: even this death must show that its nature is separa tion and division. No more dreadful fate for a living soul can be imagined than to be cast out for all eternity from the life that is in God.
To be excluded forever from the center of life is eternal death.
Hell is nothing but the continuation of the lives of those who live for themselves. Their whole existence consists in the worm of decomposition and decay, the worm that does not die, the burning and consuming fire that is not quenched, and the judgment that means dissolution and separation. Simply because he had kept his riches to himself, the rich man – outside whose door the beggar
Lazarus lay –met this eternal death. Ignoring the need of others, he had enjoyed his riches as his rightful possession. All he had neglected to do was to give up his goods to become one with the poor.
Only the one who sells everything and gives it to the poor can gain treasure in heaven – life in God. Jesus challenges everyone who 6 7 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L is rich to this absolutely necessary action. That is the only way to join the itinerant, property-free community of Jesus, the unity of those who follow him. Humanly speaking, to go this way is and always will seem quite impossible for those who own house and land. But with God all things are possible. History proves it. Wealth is death because it isolates the heart from need and distress and so isolates it from love. But God can give life even to the richest by calling them out of death. He can free anyone by leading him or her to the love that surrenders everything in perfect trust.
How does it happen that God with his unlimited life takes hold of our limited existence and fills it? We must be perfectly clear about the answer to this question and all its consequences. God is life.
Only in him do we live, move, and have our being. Physical life throughout nature, like all life, has its origin and being in God alone. God does not disown his creation. He will lead it through fire to a new day. But the souls of people owe their decidedly unique life in a very special way to a direct communication from God. It is from God that we have the breath of life. He is the Father of spirits: just as he created the hosts of heaven with his breath, so on earth we received spirit from him.
Life is not limited to the blood that courses through our veins.
The blowing breath of God, breathed into us as spirit, is deeper. It is this spirit that takes up our calling in life. It is this spirit that has to determine the life of the human soul. The blood must not be allowed to rule – it has to serve. Otherwise it ruins the spirit. The breath we have from God is spirit and soul. For this spirit that was breathed into our soul is the soul's unique life, its deepest life.
What distinguishes the soul and gives it a direction is the spirit.
Here lies the boundary between humankind and beast. Animals too
6 8 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L have blood and a soul. What they lack is spirit, which is more than reason and understanding. To shed the blood of animals is a respon sible business, but anyone who sees the sacrifice of slaughtered animals as similar to killing people, acknowledging only a relative difference between the two – a difference of degree – has misunderstood the spirit God has given to us, and us alone, of all terrestrial beings. We have been placed above animals. Our spirit is meant to rule over the animals. However, we can do so only under one condition, and we can accept the ultimate sacrifice from them – the sacrifice of their blood – only under this one condition: that our life is given to the tasks of the spirit and that, as images of God, we conquer the earth for God's kingdom. But whoever kills people lays violent hands on the countenance of God, committing a sacrilege against the task of the spirit, for the spirit wants to bring everyone together in unity. For no one is without spirit. When people cooperate with every breath of God's spirit, it becomes impossible for them to fight with murderous intent and kill each other. We are given to each other to become united in life, because human spirit belongs to human spirit. The spirit of God unites one human spirit to another by ruling over them.
The spirit is meant from now on to rule as the higher power over all lower powers of the soul and unite them under its dominion.
Aristotle knew this even in his time. It is simply impossible for a mere product of the soul's lower faculties to be the distinguishing feature of the human soul. The spirit cannot deny its origin. There fore to be ruled by the blood or to allow base or superficial things to satisfy us completely is unworthy of our calling. Everything that betrays and destroys community in the spirit must be seen as base.
Therefore we see as bestial – and worse than bestial –every debase ment that takes place through the unbridled urges of the soul in 6 9 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L the blood. More than any madness, it tramples our true identity in the dust.
The human spirit has the very greatest of destinies: God and his kingdom. Like the satanic spirit Lucifer, however, this spirit with such a high destiny has turned away from the highest and precisely for this reason has become a rich breeding ground for the antigod principle. Separated from God, we seek ourselves and our own king dom. From now on we profess what is high and noble but without the rule and unity of God. We strive for our own exaltation with out giving recognition to God's deeds. We live for human selfredemption, without honoring and accepting the deed of Jesus
Christ and his redemption. For the people of our own race and blood and our own class, we are even ready to sacrifice human life, rejecting God's kingdom and God's people.
It should be plain to everyone that all these ideals of the human spirit that are separated from God have come to nothing. They have come to nothing in their concept of world peace without Christ.
They have come to nothing in their efforts toward justice and free dom without his kingdom and his church. They have come to noth ing in their illusion of an international unity without unity in the spirit of truth. Prosperity in a people united by race is founded on property and selfish advantage. In just the same way, the world wide economic unity of high finance has been built up on the mate rial prosperity of individuals and their mutual advantage. Even the proletarian Internationale has used its solidarity much more for material advantage in the present, for a fraction of the underprivi leged (even if it is a large fraction), than for the greater justice of a future that could embrace everyone.
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Now when in the face of all this, the policy of isolation makes nations try to close the frontiers of the earth in an effort to establish their economic self-sufficiency, they deny that the earth belongs to God. They deny that God's will is to be the God of all people and that the will of his kingdom is to unite all nations in mutual service and make the products of their work the common property of all. It is impossible, though, for humankind to become an integrated world society, a world community of the Spirit, unless it allows
God's spirit to reprove it, judge it, and rule it. God's rule, however, means that people no longer seek their own advantage or privileges anymore, and that self-preservation is nowhere placed above the Spirit's cause – that of unity.
Right up to the present day, there is no political element of worldwide importance that follows this way of God's world rulership. Consequently, every great movement with a hope for justice has inevitably met defeat again and again. In just the same way, every kind of national self-redemption has come to grief – and will repeatedly come to grief – because, in setting up an idolatry that is supposed to bring recovery to the world, it rejects and even spurns the very nature of divine liberation and healing. As long as the rulership of God and his kingdom are left in the background, efforts toward human progress of any kind will inevitably break down over and over again. All human efforts toward salvation are doomed to fail because, deluded as they are, they presume to lead to the heights – not with God, but with the power of idols. Faith in the masses, faith in blood, faith in any power other than the spirit of God, will be annihilated in the fire of the future. All kinds of false beliefs break down under the horrors of war, but annihilation in the fire of the future will be still more thorough.
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However, what remains indestructible in all the waves of battle that surge around us is our spirit – the first thing to surrender to God's will. Here and there in all parties, the inner depths of the spirit are already beginning to open up. Man's spirit is awakening.
Its will is aroused. It is still blinded by confusion and unclarity. It is still benighted by separation from God. But the hour is near when our spirits far and wide will be gripped and called by God.
The fact that the soul is pulled in two directions is the cause of all the confusion that hinders this call. Through the spirit the soul is drawn to God on the one side, and through the blood it is bound to what is physical and material on the other side. In this dilemma, it remains dangerously exposed to unspiritual movements that continually attack it and try to sever it from the spirit of God.
The physical and material is not the real enemy of the soul. It is merely the area that the soul has to bring under control as its task.
The real enemy of life is the corruption of soul that thwarts all efforts to accomplish this task. It is only since the soul has become degenerate that it has come under the oppressive power of the physical and material. From the beginning, it has been an accepted fact that body and soul pervade each other, but originally it was the spirit that was meant to rule over body and soul. Through repressing the spirit, the diseased soul has brought things to such a pass that the spiritual life nowadays is enslaved to physical conditions.
From the turbulence around us today we can see much more clearly than we might in more settled times: no movement that arises from a human spirit can ever boast of having freedom and independence on account of its own efforts.
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Today we are bound to peculiarities of race and nation, depen dent on economic situations and on privileges – or lack of them – for our standard and mode of life. We are influenced by powers of suggestion that originate with other people and movements. Not least of all, we are swayed by psycho-physical circumstances and by