Part 5
subtle – it even attacks all weariness and neglect. It punishes all dead works, for they actually prevent the spirit of God from filling our hearts with the breath of life.
As long as God's spirit is at work in his church among believers, consciences work and speak without respite and without delay. A conscience that is as still as the grave is not a good conscience.
Everything would be lost if this voice were to fall silent. It is only by a twofold deception that false prophecy can bring the conscience to the point of being deathly quiet. First of all, the conscience is lost when we allow ourselves to be persuaded to the false belief that evil and all consequent injustices are unchangeable – that their supremacy is inviolable. Educated to false humility in the face of evil and to false submission to alien gods, the conscience gives up the struggle and forfeits its fighting spirit. The god of this world and its zeitgeist has dazzled the conscience: he has cheated it of its goal.
If there is anything more dangerous than this submission to the influence of evil over the world, it is the second deception prac ticed by false prophecy: soothing the conscience with feigned selfassurance. It is another weapon, just the reverse of the first, but it is the same enemy. It attacks the front from the other flank.
Through a morbid, imagined holiness it leads to the same result: the blunting and deadening of the conscience. Our conscience is 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 1 3 9 inevitably struck dumb as soon as we see ourselves as sanctified and our own life as equal to Christ's. With such delusions we are farther than ever from God's kingdom. Being self-satisfied, we no longer have the hunger and thirst without which there can be no Godgiven life , without which the righteousness of his kingdom cannot reach us. In both types of deception, there is a deadly similarity in the end: we belong to those who are seared, as it were, with a branding iron and hardened to their own conscience.
Among the personal testimonies through which Paul gives us a glimpse into his inner life as an apostle, the most striking is that his conscience too did not rest: through the free gift of God, Paul's conscience became as active as it was good. Because of the lively activity of his conscience, it was made free of all offense through grace. The testimony of Paul's conscience is confirmed by the simplicity and sincerity of everything this apostle of Jesus Christ does and says. It is through the grace of God that this happens. The grace of God makes the one who is sent out able to carry out his commission among people. It can be carried out by no human strength or wisdom.
It is forgiving grace that frees us undeserving people from all guilt. Only this grace can give an active conscience the help that protects and strengthens it. It is only by being acquitted that the one arrested can find a new freedom for work. It is the same today before the judgment bar of the conscience as it will be on the day of judgment at the end of history: only grace that forgives through the blood of the crucified one, exoneration from all guilt through the deed of the innocent one who was put to death, will lead to acquittal.
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This undeserved gift of an acquittal is given, not because of anything in the conduct or the inner life of the accused, but as a final, judicial pardon from the highest power. The life and blood, spirit and soul of Jesus must be accepted by the condemned, becoming part of their very nature. Only in this way can they expect new life instead of death.
It is quite different with Christ. With him, it is not created matter that is decisive but the spirit of the Creator. There is no transfusion of a material substance here: it is not blood that is given to blood. Spirit is given to spirit. The spirit who is God comes to the spirit of humankind. It is not a material thing but life from God. Jesus lived in the spirit of God. He brought his kingdom in this spirit. At the climax of his life, his soul, filled with the Holy Spirit, was poured out for us. This pure life of Jesus is the starting point from which his quickening spirit streams out to our spirit. The cru cified one gave his spirit into the hands of the Father. From the Father, he sent out the Holy Spirit to his church. Now he who is lord and ruler is the spirit of the church. In the spirit Christ imparts himself to us. Through this spirit, we no longer lead our own lives but his life, and his life alone.
In this spirit, Jesus is in the midst of those who believe in him. In this Holy Spirit, he is present with everything he has accomplished by his life and death. In this spirit, strength comes to us – that strength with which he shattered all the instruments and weapons of death and exterminated all the poisons and germs of evil. The historical reality of the deed that blotted out all guilt brings us strength through the Holy Spirit.
From the death of Christ we receive the strength to break with things as they are and to die to the dead life within us and around
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 1 4 1 us. This dying requires the utmost strength. It is given to us in Jesus.
Then in all we are and do, what is decisive is no longer our life, or the life of others, but his life alone. Whatever we were and did before, we are now absolved and pardoned. Where the old life has come to an end, the new life begins.
The inner life is brought into community with God through the gift of purification – purification of the conscience through the death of Christ. The Holy Spirit does this. In faith, the innermost soul has access to God. The believing spirit has intercourse with the presence of Jesus Christ. Our spirit brings its witness into agree ment with the spirit of God. Our conscience lives in the Holy Spirit from now on. Our spirit and conscience are led by the spirit of God.
Christ proves himself as the risen and the living one in the powerful working of his spirit. Through him, the new life corresponding to the kingdom of God is brought into being in and around us. This life demands a supreme strength. It is given to us in Christ, the living one.
In the spirit of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God as justice, peace, and joy spreads over the whole of life. Whoever believes in him in this way is able to exert himself to keep his conscience alive and preserved from offense at all times before God and man. When we have turned resolutely and steadfastly away from evil, we can turn again and again to loving justice and to peace-making unity – to the purity and truth of God's kingdom. This life in Christ is possible.
Wherever we believe in Jesus Christ, it will be given through the Holy Spirit.
Once it is bound to Christ, the conscience has found its goal and its destiny. In the word and example of Mary's son, the picture of 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 1 4 2 the longed-for justice and righteousness engraved on the hearts of all people finds its perfect original. In his work it has found its consummation. This holy truth does not want to be a mere onlooker outside the conscience. The life and work of Jesus is planted into the heart and all it does. Those who have faith become a living letter from Jesus Christ: the truth of Jesus has become an inner word written on the pages of our hearts. Deeds are what make this handwriting legible to everyone – deeds that are imprinted on a life as they spring from the heart, one letter of the spirit after another. The conscience is made clear and new, in that the holiness of God's will is alive in every heart and becomes a reality in every deed. Our whole life is illuminated by the in-dwelling
Christ. He transforms every sphere of our life from within to without. He makes everything new and different.
The soul has received the truth into its innermost depths, into its spirit. The conscience honors the truth by being obedient to it and gaining support from it. The conscience can be compared to a tender climbing plant: without a support it sprawls on the ground and withers. It needs something high and strong. No matter what it climbs on, it does not change its nature. Ivy never adopts the form of leaf and growth that belongs to the tree it clings to in order to live. And yet its laborious climbing serves to glorify the object to which it is attached. Its destiny is that of the object it clings to.
Should the tree fall, the ivy is inevitably involved in its fall.
The conscience seeks the Rock that cannot fall and can never change. It seeks God. It longs for Christ; it presses on toward his spirit and his truth. It can never find peace and it can never find stability in other ideals, especially when they whip up emotional enthusiasm to the point of racial fanaticism. Certainty of con science dwells in absolute truth alone.
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Within itself, the conscience has no guarantee that it is right. It is like a pair of scales that has no weights. Give them false weights, the more accurate and sensitive the scales are, the bigger will be the lie. It is more deceptive to weigh with false weights than to lie and deceive in other ways. Only true weights give the conscience any value. Without them it keeps on vibrating and wavering unsteadily, deceiving and misleading in the most dangerous way.
Only absolute truth gives the conscience any authority or guarantee of being right. The truth and what the truth demands in life is all the conscience can represent with confidence.
The Vehmgerichte – medieval Germany's secret courts –did untold harm. What they lacked was the clear foundation of an authoritative standard that had been objectively determined. We have experi enced what confusion of conscience is caused by contradictory orders and their unforeseeable consequences, even when they have been issued by well-meaning governments and authorities. If it cannot prove itself before the conscience to be an objective expres sion of absolute justice, the most carefully thought-out legislation is pernicious.
The horrors of the Vehmic courts have been directly brought home to us by the murderous commands of courts-martial, by the unbelievable opinions of excited reporters, the appalling injustice of misinformed journalists, and the confusing slogans of fanatical parties and civil war organizations. The murders committed by secret courts in our day are no mere coincidence. They have revealed the evil spirit of our day. Fanaticism is uncertainty run amok. That is the only reason why it out-Herods Herod in senseless and exaggerated hate. It has forfeited all light and warmth. It has no heart. The conscience has lost its criterion. Without any
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 1 4 4 objective reason, it rages against everything that goes counter to its morbid obsessions.
After a recent election I read of one man who had to be taken to a mental hospital as a result of his desperate efforts to make up his mind in the utter confusion of his political ideas. That was more than a grotesque and isolated incident. He had made the daring attempt to go along with the convention policies of all parties and all factions. It may well be that he was more sensible and reasonable than the blind mass of voters. How much weaker are the consciences of those who cast their vote without ever having recognized the real nature of party candidates and party platforms.
How many there are who make no attempt to go into the policy or motives of the party that is overthrown by their vote! People throw their votes into the scales of world history without being able to weigh up one party against another. Conscience has been thrown to the winds. People have incurred responsibility for incalculable guilt. Without looking for guidance from their consciences, they have presumed to make weighty decisions of worldwide importance.
Our conscience warns us: do nothing without sufficient reason; never act without a firm basis of fact; go into action only when you know what you are doing! The only way to safeguard our lives from the curse of irresponsible action is to accept the unfalsified weights – truth. God's justice, alive in the heart, is the only criterion that carries authority in every decision. Otherwise there is no ground under our feet. When God's nature – his unchangeable righteousness – is firmly imprinted on our conscience, then, and only then, can our conscience pass judgment and give witness.
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Conflicting human opinions of relative right and relative wrong do not help the conscience to make well-founded decisions. It can take a clear stand through the weight of God's truth only. It is only on the rock of the genuine Christ that the conscience finds any stability. Christ alone is the example, guide, and liberator. He alone gives the conscience the foundation, the basis, and the reason for responsible action. There is no other righteousness – only that of his coming kingdom.
Everything else fluctuates, uncertain. It changes its nature, for it is inadequate. It has no stability, no adequate foundation. Even in the most educated families and the finest schools, human ideas totter and fall. Everything that is human fluctuates between limp docility and rigid opposition. Nothing is certain. Everything is relative. The result is clear: in this relativism, which gives equal recognition to quite irreconcilable opposites, humankind loses all sense of values.
In the face of all this confusion, Jesus Christ remains today and forever exactly the same as he was in the time of Augustus and Herod and Pilate, no matter how many thousand times his clear picture is changed and falsified by this relativism. What his will brings about today is exactly the same as he will establish in his final kingdom at the end of time. Only he who is immutable is decision – everything else is delay and displacement. The relativism and fickleness of our own opinions can have only one result: the will to live sickens and breaks down. Life gains health only through the absoluteness of Christ's will, which is always and forever the same. Health is strength to act and power to create, born out of a sure instinct for life and well-considered decisions. It calls for something firm and constant to fill the whole of life.
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Only when it is completely bound to Christ will the conscience become healthy. True life is not to be found anywhere else: only in this divine influence, which is immutable. Only when Christ, unlim ited, has become the anchor for our consciences can life recover.
Only when the inner life regains health in Christ can the distress in our time be tackled. The conscience looks to Christ for healing. It is Jesus who heals the people of our day and age just as he healed the sick in his day. It is Christ who shows our generation the way of salvation. It is the same way along which he, the king chosen by God, will lead everything to the goal at the end of all days. The tremendous tasks facing us today can never be accomplished by the hopelessly confused spirit of our times – only by the spirit of the future, the spirit of Christ's kingdom.
Just as he was the spirit of the early church, Christ's spirit of the future wants to be the spirit of community here and now. It is in the living Christ of the prophets and apostles that the stream of future riches comes to us. It is in the apostolic word that Christ comes to us. It is in the prophetic word that his spirit purifies our conscience. He wants to submerge us in the truth as in a bath of invigorating waters. In the spirit of the prophets and apostles, the spirit of Jesus Christ reveals himself always and everywhere as unchangeably one with himself. What he instills into our conscience today is no less than the substance of this constant accord with himself. He brings unanimity to the church today in one and the same way as to the prophets and apostles and to the church in all ages, inscribing on their hearts the one way of truth and of life.
In all ages, the spirit of Jesus Christ proclaims the same things of the future. He brings the powers of the same future world to all
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 1 4 7 generations. All those who accept these powers are able to live by them at all times. The spirit constantly reminds us of the eternally valid words of Jesus Christ. They can and shall be carried out by all generations on earth. The conscience of all believers becomes firm and sure through the direct uniting with the word of the Spirit, which is spoken into the conscience and is always the same as the word of the apostles and prophets. In this supreme unity, the con science is equal to any new and unexpected event.
The conscience becomes lively and firm through this spirit, who glorifies Christ as the unchanging lord in the entire church of all times: past, present, and future. Out of faith, the spirit of God awakens courage to do unflinchingly what this spirit wants done.
In this way, faith becomes joy in fruitful work and activity. This work corresponds to the kingdom of the same Christ who was and is and is to come.
In the very beginning, the conscience got its voice from the vital fact that the first man was a living soul whose breath came from God. Since the fall of the soul, the conscience can do justice to this divine origin only when the quickening spirit has taken possession of souls who are slowly dying (Rom. 5:12, ff.). The old conscience – the conscience given to every human soul by nature – is by no means an authority for the apostolic task. The apostle of Jesus
Christ bases his conscience on his witness in the Holy Spirit.
The witness Paul uses to prove the truth of his statements is not a divided one. On the contrary, the uniting influence of the holy, quickening spirit heals the conscience that stands before God from all the dividedness it has fallen into through the corruption of the soul. God's spirit purifies our spirit to such a clarity that the one can unite with the other to make one witness. In the Holy Spirit, 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 1 4 8 the conscience regains health to form a unanimous witness with this spirit-above-all-other-spirits, who is the spirit of God.
When the conscience lives in the Holy Spirit, it is so completely immersed in him that it breathes no other air than that of the Holy
Spirit. From then on, the nature and character of this spirit deter mines the conscience. As a conscience in the Holy Spirit, it glorifies
Christ, brings to mind all that Jesus said, and leads to the active expectation of his future. In this way, the conscience rouses people to a most intent watching and praying so that they might not succumb to other spirits in times of danger nor be tempted again by foreign influences to a new downfall. To fall again would mean not only the loss of their living soul but also the loss of the quickening spirit.
Yet this spirit is stronger than all other spirits. The sole purpose of the Holy Spirit in waking and protecting the conscience is to win a conclusive victory over all the powers that enslave people. The Holy Spirit is at work when Christ is glorified, when God is revealed, and when his rule is recognized. God's power liberates the con science from all other spiritual powers. No one but God himself, the Omnipotent, can win this victory.
When the original Greek speaks of "the conscience that is bound to God," it relates the conscience so firmly and closely to God that to be accurate we would even have to translate it as "God's conscience." The inner life has the same feeling: "the conscience that is bound to God" is a conscience before God, toward God, and in God: a conscience of the spirit of Jesus Christ, God's conscience.
In God and through Christ, it has become free from every false direction and from every tie that enslaves. It lives in God and has become God's. God is the freedom of the conscience.
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Today when all the impassioned movements among peoples take their stand on the struggle for freedom, what they have in mind is one of the ultimate thoughts of God's will. Freedom is God's thought for humankind. Without freedom, no one is a real person.
Only those are free who are not compelled to do what goes against their consciences. Emancipation gives back to the conscience the possibility of working without restrictions. Only when life as an integrated whole asserts the freedom to fulfill its destiny in every area, spiritual and material, can we speak of freedom.
Only when it is lived in accordance with the deepest and ultimate calling is life free. This applies not only to religion and morals (the more specific area of the soul's activity) but also to public relationships in society and economic life; not only to the innermost life of faith but also to vocational and family life. The last battle for freedom is waged for a conscience that embraces all aspects of life. Any other fight for freedom is a delusion. Any restriction of the goal of freedom brings unfreedom. We should know that true freedom consists in the unhindered development of the whole destiny of the whole person. Freedom lives in being whole.
Before the call to battle for freedom goes out, against the danger of permanent subjugation threatening our spirit and working strength, it should be made clear first and foremost that the destiny of the human spirit is universal freedom of conscience.
Only then can steps be taken leading to freedom. The task must be clear before we can devote ourselves to it.
The call to freedom stimulates freedom for everything a healthy conscience wants; otherwise it is a lie and a delusion. We
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 1 5 0 must know what we are freed for before we can be told what we must be freed from. The question is, "Free for what?" Freedom without a goal is bondage. What must become free is the will for the good; what it must become free for is good deeds. It is the purpose and meaning of a deed that make it good. A conscience cannot be called to freedom as long as it is lying bare and fallow, aimless and empty. Truth alone will make us free. Only the task that truth sets us gives meaning to our free dedication. Half-truths are untruths. The tasks they ask of us are worthless. Only the whole truth is freedom.
If we want to fight through to the freedom of our ultimate destiny, we must put aside all dependence on human beings and human standards. Only this freedom gives purpose and meaning to our conscience. To the healthy conscience, voluntary subjection to human powers is bondage. It demands a dedication that is in fact purposeless and meaningless. The apostle of Jesus Christ challenges us never again to become slaves to people. Only in the one freedom, the freedom for which Christ has freed us, can we throw off once and for all servitude aping freedom and slavery hiding beneath a mask. The obedience springing from faith in Christ is freedom. It leads to a life that is in harmony with the holy "thou shalt" coming from the healthy conscience. God's holy "thou shalt" is our holy freedom. It is the true essence of our soul and conscience.
Jesus Christ is the only leader to freedom. He does not bring bondage in disguise. He does nothing against the free will of the human spirit. He rouses the free will to do what it must be challenged to do by every truth-loving conscience. The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit is, there is freedom. It is power that is free to act freely.
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Anyone who wants to hand over the responsibility for what he or she does to another – anyone who wants to obey a human leader – has betrayed freedom, become enslaved. And when this leader, this seducer, calls to a freedom that is no freedom, it spells complete ruin for enslaved consciences. Consciences are ruined by all leaders whose authority is human. It is for this reason that Jesus said: "You shall not call each other leader. Only One is your master, but you are brothers." The foundation of freedom on which the conscience can regain health is brotherliness, sisterliness, and equality before God. This alone guarantees that love – the pure love that springs from faith – is put into practice.
When the church is free, it means healing and health for the conscience. This freedom is given by the only spirit that is free: the spirit of God. It is God's rule that brings freedom to the conscience.
The kingdom comes. The healing of all hurt begins. The conscience bound to God becomes free and healthy. Then it becomes active – then the way is cleared. Work begins. The whole of life becomes free. The work of the Spirit will be established. Those made free by Christ are indeed free.
The freedom of Christ masters reality. Through him, the conscience becomes healthy in this freedom coming from clear and objective decisions. The gift of creative powers is the result of this instinctively sure way of life. The conscience has found substance and meaning in the will of the Spirit. The healing of humankind is the kingdom of God.
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The Experience of God
The more shaking the events in the world around us, the more necessary it is to recognize the forces at work in them – that is the spiritual powers that determine their course. Outward events as violent as those of our day call for an insight into this ultimate will and its aim. But the more agitated the times, the more temporary matters push to the fore; the more tense, the more impossible it seems to get clear about the ultimate answer. Issues are utterly confused. Mounting pressure leads to emergency measures – imperative, or so it seems. Limited to the times, they are not able to turn the tide of need and distress. One attempt follows another, misery increases, and nothing can overcome it; people go under in the day-to-day struggle and lose all hope of a change.
Some think they have to give priority to patriotic ideas and the historic task laid on the nation. The longed-for freedom of the national community seems the only goal, demanding that every thing else is subjected and sacrificed to it. Others, however, believe in a historical development in every nation to raise to power all
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 1 5 3 those oppressed and exploited by competition and private enter prise: They are to be given a power that for a time is unlimited. In comparison with both of these, the champions of liberty and free dom for the individual retreat into the background. No state protection preserves them from the approaching insignificance. In the end, a classless society based on justice and peace and uniting all extremes falls almost completely by the wayside in the struggle for quickly-won power.
Not one of these three directions with their struggles and fluctu ating hopes expects anything from the prophetic power of the Christ-proclamation. Those of the third and middle way between the first two extremes have no fears that their egotistical life might be shattered by the kingdom of God. And where an individual tries to comply with the economic system, his or her conscience becomes too dull to be aware how universal need and distress are. But to the right and to the left, people think more seriously. To the right, in contradiction to Christ, they want religion to uphold unconditionally the power structure they have fought for. Christian consciences are meant to surrender to it in willing submission; the conscience becomes the slave of political power. To the left, all they see in the Christian confession is their most hated opponent and the social power of class privilege. All they know of Christianity is a power which, contradicting Christ, covers up social injustice with a hypocritical mien and refers the tormented to a better world hereafter. The Christian conscience represents the height of injustice. Therefore it should be exterminated.
To all this, Christian confessions in general, apart from a few rare exceptions, have nothing to say. The prophetic clarity of intense and confident waiting for a final kingdom – a kingdom of loving
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 1 5 4 community in God – has given way to feeble imitations. People no longer believe that the peace, justice, and brotherliness of the kingdom of God are a present reality, eclipsing all other hopes of the future. And yet all these prospects of a better future are borrowed from the hopes of prophetic early Christianity. They would not exist without them. But not even the historical signifi cance of early Christian prophecy is taken seriously. In practice, the general run of Christianity just accepts existing conditions of social order, or disorder, including any new ideas people come up with.
The early Christian expectation is being forgotten. Because it is no longer seriously believed, it has for present-day Christianity lost the dynamic to overturn and transform everything.
True, there are still some who point out seriously that God is quite other than humankind, quite other than all they of themselves want or do. But there are very few who so really and truly believe in this quite different God that they see the approach of his reign and comprehend it. Only these very few lend a hand in faith so that a fundamental change, affecting everyone and all conditions, actually begins. The inner thinking born of faith in God's kingdom is completely other than the thinking of human religion: those with faith in God's kingdom approach everything with a certainty from God himself that the impossible can become possible, in outer circumstances just as much as in the innermost. This faith in God may be as small as a grain of seed, yet it will remove obstacles of the weightiest nature.
Such faith lets the future and the beyond penetrate the present – this earth. Out of the strength it derives from this source, it sets to and gives everything shape and form. The believer has realized that to leave God in the world beyond is to deny Christ. For Christ has 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 1 5 5 said and proved that God draws near, so near that everything has to be changed "from the very foundation" (Mark 1:15). Yet Jesus knew that this triumphant joy would be accepted by only very few.
People are readier to believe in the autonomy of things than the message of God that overturns everything. They experience things more forcibly than they experience God. They are idolaters, for they serve the creature more than the creator. But faith has to step in and unite our life with the creative power. This alone remains superior to any created power.
God stands above all that happens. Only when we are one with God can our faith withstand all powers that storm it. It is not we who stand firm. Only God is invincible. In him alone is freedom of soul found, saving us from being enslaved, however mighty the power. God has drawn near. We can be in God. God wants to be known and experienced. Yet we quake before it. It is terrifying: truth is disclosed as a consequence. Because God's light shows up our darkness, we are afraid of it.
God begins – that is the end for us. When in fear and trembling we know God and are known by him, we are shocked, and God draws near. When the Most High descends to us, the degraded, all cloaks and barriers are torn away. God is revealed only through this fearful experience. When we experience God, we appear before God as we are. As long as we shrink from being exposed for what we are by God's unhindered recognition of us, we remain hope lessly lost and helpless in the supremacy of the world outside. As long as we submit to things as they are and remain their slaves, terror of God repels us and keeps us at a distance.
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God is indeed other than we are. It is true that to our unbelief, he is far removed. We have lost sight of his image. But it was not always like this and must not stay so. We were once created to be near to him. God began – that was our beginning. There was a time when God's drawing near did not spell terror. God's image was once entrusted to man and woman so the Spirit would rule. This rule of God's spirit was to be recognized as the creative power of unity, as love and community. We have forfeited all this. We have lost God.
Only God himself could give us back what we have lost: he himself and his image. In Jesus Christ he did this. In Jesus, God's heart has come into our midst once more. Once more it became clear in him what will and spirit God is. He revealed afresh what purpose and what reality of unity and love live in God. He came to do the will of the Father. He brought the Father down to us. He carries out his decree. He and the Father are one. In Jesus, God is near once more.
This message has to be believed.
When Jesus brings God near, God can be recognized as God, and men and women become men and women. God's approach changes us, without us becoming God. We stand in terror before God who is quite other; even in the gift of his presence, one decisive thing remains unchanged: we cannot become God. We remain other than God.
Therefore, although we might understand it, we cannot embrace the sort of mysticism that deifies nature or people. Such deifica tion is a delusion: it leads people to the mistaken notion that hu man life can be subsumed in some grandiose conception of a divine
All. To a follower of Jesus it is clear that the spirit of the living God comes not only to save but to judge. As the law and the prophets testify, he is the good and the just, the pure and the holy one. But 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 1 5 7 we are not good, not just, not pure, and not holy. God's nature is the opposite of our nature.
God is spirit and will in a way we are not. He is the will of what is good and perfect. This we are not. Yet his judgment is our salvation.
Out of the rubble of our degenerate lives he wants to salvage the life of the creation. God demolishes our nature as it is and with it the way we have lived and carried on. Out of these ruins, he wants to bring to light the human race as it originally was and is finally meant to be. We are lying under the mountain. The boulders are being blasted. The debris must be cleared away. The vein of gold cannot be laid bare unless the mountain is blasted. This freeing is love. The place for gold is in the sun; without the sun, gold is as black as coal. God is merciful to us in our poverty, for we are suffering under it, burdened by it, and buried in it in spirit and in will. He releases us from every need and supplies all we lack.
God has drawn near as power, liberating and drawing us close.
He accomplishes this in Christ. He is the God of uniting love for people who were not free, not united, and not loving. He leads to a future that allows his will, as his spirit, to rule over everything else.
God's future wishes to rule over us here and now. Through this we will be transformed and made true. His kingdom of unity shall take possession of everything that has been disunited. Here is Christ: God remains God, we become God's people.
We cannot be merged with God as a drop is merged with the ocean or a spark with a sea of fire. For we are not part and parcel of his nature. There is no "we" between us and God. There is only "thou." But there is this "thou," and that is greater. God goes out to us, and a personal community is the result. It is a moral relation ship of unity in will and deed between God and his people. Just this 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 1 5 8 is so unspeakably great in Jesus Christ: unity becomes a reality in that the truth is unveiled. The light of truth shines on us in all its sharpness. When we experience God in Jesus Christ, we experience his nature as holiness – a holiness that judges our sin yet draws us into unity with him. God makes us conscious of our corrupt state as unholy unrighteousness yet leads everything to holy righteousness.
Because God is a creative spirit, he cannot let his works come to a standstill when he has brought us to realize with horror our own unrighteousness. It is quite a lot, even a great deal, to know our selves condemned and absolutely opposed to God and hostile to him in our very nature, in our actions, and in all the relationships that condition what we do. But it is still not enough, not nearly enough. First it has to become clear that we (with all we have and do) are absolutely different from God and his works, absolutely different from how he wants us to be. Then his spirit, who makes all things new, insists that we with all our doings become at long last as God means us to be. Our own works have to stop in order for his to begin. In us his work has to begin. With us it has to be established.
Some reject faith in the intervention of God in his creation here and now as a mystical faith based on personal experience. Others cannot believe that God makes himself known as a living God in the hearts and lives of those who receive him. They have forgotten the gospel as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and in a special way John passed it on. They deny the power of God as it was revealed in Jesus. Some want to exalt the limited theological thinking of the human brain and elevate it as the only faith to be experienced. But they reject unity with God and the works of love springing from faith – not only for our time and our contemporaries. They reject the apostles
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 1 5 9 of Jesus Christ and therefore Jesus himself. And whoever rejects
Jesus rejects God who sent him.
By bringing God near to us, by coming himself with power, Jesus exposed our smallness and hostility more clearly than all human dialectic can do. So one thing is and remains right about these theo logical reflections, something fundamental with regard to the gos pels: faced with God's greatness we become terrifyingly aware of our smallness. This absolute feebleness and smallness applies as much to our feeling, willing, and doing as to our thinking.
In God's light our baseness and smallness, our weakness and dark ness, must constantly be exposed to him and to ourselves. Before him, we can appear only as we really are. In his presence, the last shreds of self-idolatry, self-redemption, and self-seeking vanish. His sunshine reveals our life as night. His clarity opens our darkened eyes to see the mountains of filth that bury us. His loving justice shows up the injustice of our rule with its mammonistic nature. His all-inclusive will for peace reveals the will to murder and the urge to set limits that characterize all our ideals. Whether they are based on individualism, patriotism, proletarianism, or any other "ism" makes little difference. God's truth and God's essential nature throw into sharp relief the untruthfulness and insignificance of our lives, private and public.
The experience of God unites and divides at the same time.
The deeper his love leads into community with his heart and into brotherly uniting, the more sharply do we become aware of the absolute difference between our sin, which is separation, and his purity, which is unity. There is all the difference in the world between God and us. God wants unity without glossing over the differences.
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Uniting with God is possible only through the radical destruction of all powers that oppose God, of everything in conflict with him or done in antagonism to him. Therefore, fundamental in any expe rience of God is forgiveness and the taking away of sin (remission and freeing). Forgiveness is the taking away of what is present (that is, sin). When God unites, what is against him cannot be present. He wants absolute purity in uniting. Therefore everything that opposes purity must first be given up and then taken away.
That is forgiveness. God's kingdom will not come without it.
Whoever accepts God in Jesus, or receives in Jesus the forgive ness and the works of God, embraces God himself directly. God is embraced by the faith of the heart. For the heart has been gripped by God himself. But God never divides himself when he gives himself. He gives himself completely. Acute consciousness of our utter insignificance, dividedness, and sinfulness makes it possible to accept the utterly different and eternally indivisible one. The believer is completely one with God, because only God is completely one. Faith is truth, because the object of faith is God.
Because God is truth, our self-deception vanishes. The heart knows only too well: my small "I" has not been merged into the great "I."
Still less has this very small "I" been puffed up into something great. Lightning from above has shown up the tension: the human heart remains a very small "I," and that very small "I" dedicates its will to God completely and worships the great "thou" that gives itself to us in ineffable loving-kindness.
The believer does not surrender his or her feeble consciousness to the almighty consciousness. In experiencing God, Christians are not seeking an opiate for their intelligence. They do not see in the spirit of God a fading-out of human senses. But just as little do they
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 1 6 1 presume to comprehend the spirit of God through the powers of understanding. They do not believe they can know God through the insight of their own powers of thinking. Believers do not presume to think they can grasp God through the intensity of their inner life, their emotions, or their willpower. Their faith places God's greatness before them as something so inviolable that feeble human strength has no chance of touching him. All human efforts to achieve union with God are in vain. If faith were a human function, it would be nothing. It could have nothing but a human object; it could never grasp God.
At this point, however, God intervenes. The union so impossible for us ever to achieve takes place through his intervention. If the word "faith" is to keep its meaning, it must be a certainty about what God – not people but really God – is and does. Faith belongs to God; it does not stem from people. It is God who gives us faith and brings it about. That is where we are one with God.
In the soul, faith is expressed in a heart-to-heart relationship that God brings about. In this uniting through faith, God is the one who wills, God is the one at work. Faith is expressed in an active and effective love in outward circumstances and public life, but it is God at work. God is the loving, the active one in these new works of love.
The believer acts according to God's nature, what God wills, and what God is. Without God, faith is nothing. Wherever community is given through faith, its works are vital and effective because they are God's works. Through faith, God's power is made clear by our incapability, God's greatness by our smallness.
In every decisive experience, our insignificance is confronted
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 1 6 2 with God's greatness, our inadequacy with God's mightiness, our incapacity with God's power. This experience of God runs through the whole history of humankind: God's supremacy overpowering us. When we stand in reverence before God, our first, intuitive experience of him is of an almighty power, before which all human strength is a mere nothing.
Like Elijah, the first prophets veiled their heads in shuddering awe when God was about to draw near to them. The thought of seeing God fills all genuine people with terror. In the times of the prophets, the sight of God cast the beholder to the ground, dead.
In all ages, the mystery of God's greatness has been awesome beyond measure. Whenever an overpowering sense of this comes over us, all human powers are conquered. We are bound to shake with terror whenever God draws near.
God's greatness, majesty, and might are beyond all powers of our imagination. If we were to see God, we would perish – God is so far beyond our capacity to see him face to face. With whom could we compare God? How could we give a picture of this incon ceivable greatness and power? God is unattainably great and glorious. The prophets know very well that beside him no other power can endure. His divine decree can never be fulfilled by anything human. No human power can stand before him. The life of God goes far beyond all boundaries of beginning and end. It towers immeasurably above all created things.
God has power over all nations on earth. He gains authority over all human powers. He will eventually rule over all worlds. Such an overpowering greatness of majesty makes corresponding demands that are unspeakably serious. Those gripped by prophecy sense with 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 1 6 3 awestruck reverence the inviolable and adamant nature of this overwhelming will. As Job had to lay his hand on his mouth, we have to be silent before the greatness of this power.
The greatness and majesty of God is so overwhelming that the whole earth along with all humankind will become his footstool – the footstool on which God's foot rests. Under God's feet lies everything that is visible and invisible. In human eyes, creation is overwhelmingly great and supremely powerful, a shatteringly magnificent prospect through which God draws near to our small human hearts. In the childlike minds of primeval people, God is never confused with nature. Even the earliest beginnings of faith are far from deifying nature. But childlike people do not experi ence God's majesty and greatness without nature. They cannot disregard creation when they stand before the creator. In the mysterious coherence of created worlds, as believing creatures we sense the might of the creator, which gives all created things their greatness, life, coherence, and unity. In nature, we in our smallness have an intimation of God in his greatness.
Here we have to pause for a moment. In the rush of a life cut off from nature, we must remember – stop and take it in – how overwhelmingly God's power comes to meet us in nature. No scientific progress has changed this mighty fact. The whole history of humankind proves it. Through the great and visible creation, the infinitely greater and invisible nature of God dawns on our insignificance. Creation makes known the power and divinity of the creator.
If we live on the land, the terrors of the powers of nature above all else bring us to quake before God's might. In earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, huge mountains melt like wax beneath God's
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 1 6 4 feet. Thunder and lightning, storm and tempest, scorching desert wind and blazing fire are powerful signs of the awe-inspiring approach of his greatness. Whatever the mighty phenomena of nature, it is the greatness and majesty of God that shakes us. The created world has elemental power. But we sense that over and above it all stands God, the creator who is infinitely greater and mightier than the greatest powers of creation.
As God's creations we quake before these superior forces, but no less before the tremendous mystery of life. Truly reverent people sense an ultimate mystery in all living things, aware that the living, creative spirit must be greater than all created life. Full of wonder, they stand in awed reverence at the tree bursting with life; at the lively, bubbling spring; under the lightand life-dispensing constel lations of day and night; and in the midst of earth's fruitfulness and life. How great and powerful God must be to create and sustain all this life! Every deeply shaken and moved heart is struck by the challenge that God the great creator must become undis puted sovereign over all this power and life.
In the midst of nature, history reveals the overwhelming power of God, both as violent wrath-filled terrors and as the life-giving, uniting power of love. Awaking with trembling awe to a sense of this, we can look back to the beginnings of our own history. The profoundly mysterious beginning of the human race comes from God. It is God who has in his hand also the end of the human race.
Without God, the end is shrouded from human eyes in the same darkness as the beginning.
The mystery of God the creator is experienced in all living things, but particularly in the life of human beings. It is the same in the middle as it is at the beginning and the end of the way: God is 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 1 6 5 always drawing terrifyingly near when death and catastrophe break in, as in the destruction of the world in the Flood, or the divi sion into nations at the peak of Babel's civilization. In the history of humankind, as in the whole of nature, it is God who is breaking in with mighty power when people are shaken by terrifying events.
When God's greatness strikes nations to the ground, empires and world powers are the instruments of his wrath. All the nations of the world must come to fall at the feet of the God of all worlds.
The creator of the universe rules over all ages with his decree. In history as in nature, coherence of life, community of life, peace, unity, and life itself shall be revealed (in spite of all opposition) as God's nature and God's power. So God appears to the prophetic eye as the leader and shepherd of history. He guides the actual history of humankind toward the one goal: that all nations are united in one fold.
Thus the people of Israel experienced God as the God of history in all world events, in all the whirlpools of international politics, and in the collapse of whole peoples. Only God the creator has right and might over all peoples. Whatever happens, God is arising and claiming the world dominion that is his right alone.
As humankind develops, its dawning perception finds the same traces of God in history as in nature. When the conscious mind wins through to greater clarity, it turns to history. It cannot find peace until it has wrested the ultimate meaning from past and present events and those yet to come. So it is clear that nascent faith never confuses God and history (as if the course of events could be God himself), yet God is never experienced without history. Behind all the shattering events in history, awakening humankind senses God.
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Gripped by faith, they see God at work, intervening and ultimately determining everything, behind all the mysteriously tangled threads of history, behind every event, great or small. God is at work in all that happens. His majesty towers above all history.
In all this, Jesus Christ shines out in prophecy and in the apostolic mission: Jesus, the decisive point of all history for the whole of creation! Through Christ, the eye of faith is opened and a discerning eye for history is given. Then we see how far creation and history belong to God and how far they are estranged from God and even hostile to him. Faith catches sight of the coming hour of decision.
In Jesus Christ, prophetic truth becomes reality. Those illuminated by him see the approach of the kingdom of God as a historical event. The creator breaks in upon his degenerate creation. The Lord of all worlds draws near to history with all its devious ways. Jesus
Christ intervenes in history and turns it into the history of the end time.
The end goes back to the beginning. The Morning Star of the new beginning appears. The secret of life is the sun of the future. God's aim is not the destruction of all things; his ultimate will is the resurrection of life. Resistant humankind must go through judgment, death, and annihilation. In the fire of judgment, the beginning of the new shines out as the end of the old. Renewal and restoration are revealed as the goal of all that happens. The experience of God is resurrection from the dead.
The small world of the individual is meant to mirror the great world of God's history. To experience God means to give ourselves to the goal of his kingdom in such a way that we accept his death sentence and believe in his resurrection. Strength from the future comes to the believer. The spirit of the coming Christ is at work and 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 1 6 7 charges us now with the task of the future. In the reawakening of faith, the prophetic spirit works toward the establishment of God's kingdom. New life begins at this given place, at this very moment.
The nature of the coming kingdom shall be represented in the course of history itself and on this very earth.
Through the experience of God, people living today will be drawn into the end history of creation. The fire baptism of God's judg ment will raise the phoenix from the ashes. The dying of the old world announces the rising of the new. Just because life comes to the heart when it is touched by God, it is near to death. Christ's death brings resurrection. The false life, which in any case bears the seeds of death within it, comes to an end. Life that rises in God begins and presses on to the future.
In Persian mysticism, those who become sacrifices to the passion of love destroy their lives forever, as the dying moth surrenders to the singeing flame, leaving nothing but ashes. It is quite different in Christ. In his flame, no loving believer shall perish in silence. In him, the weaker life is not meant to lose itself in the stronger. The stronger has no wish to overpower the weaker and swallow it up.
Christ kills the old in order to give life to the new. Self-will, which is sick unto death, must die. A renewed and transformed will shall come to life. The old will, already turned toward death, falls prey to it. The new will becomes free – to belong to the other life. It is roused in order to live. In God, strength is given to the will to serve this life in deed and in truth.
God's will is for our resurrection so that we can live to the full extent of our powers. Basic to the new life is its voluntary nature.
Resurrection from death leads to a life of freedom. When this becomes a reality, it means that the greatest of tasks has been 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 1 6 8 effectively assigned. Whoever proclaims judgment and death without commitment to life turns God into a judge pronouncing the death sentence or into a cold, indifferent stranger. The living
God has been denied. The quickening spirit of Jesus Christ does not allow himself to be relegated to a distance. In him, superabundant life, with all its powers of renewal through love, remains concentrated on the earth and its inhabitants. God's creative power, calling forth new life, draws near to all who want the life that is in God. This life is the worldwide rule of God.
The life-creating spirit blows where he wills. He comes as he wills.
He knows where he wants to go. Everywhere, he seeks out anyone with a determined faith who accepts no other spirit than this one and only spirit of life. To such he reveals himself as a power that breaks in across all distances. He proves himself as almighty power; our strength, compared, is a mere nothing. It is not we who awaken him: he awakens us.
In the face of his direct breaking-in, all our delusions must give way, vanquished by ultimate reality. Truth dispels all illusions. The sick and misguided spiritual life will be cast aside. The selfish psychophysical life, going headlong to ruin without light or warmth, is overpowered. Selfish life, in and of itself already condemned to death, is destroyed in the consuming fire of God's approach. Severed from the divine core of life, it was lost before it was abolished.
Even though it had died long ago, the life of the individual in its own nature was still wrongly called life. The madness and deathly stupor that makes an individual think that he or she is "the only one" must be shattered. In morbid presumption, those individuals who think they are "the only ones" claim as their property what 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 1 6 9 belongs to God. This self-conceit must die. The other life, God's life, has to begin. The individual is freed from his or her own life and won for the greatness and power of God – received into the sphere of God's power. What was dead wins community with life.
Here in this personal contact with God's life, an existence begins that encompasses everything. It cannot become sick and cannot pass away. The life that has its source in God puts its boundless energy to work in a practical way: all its members and powers come to life in the service of justice and righteousness. Then we are received into the sphere of God's kingdom. The nature of this kingdom is the rule of love. God's life is love. It is the social and moral life of perfect love. Divine love in believers brings it forth. It wants justice and righteousness first and foremost. Anyone set free in this way experiences a transformation. He comes nearer and nearer to the perfect image of love's radiant power, the reflection of the Lord and creator of life alone.
Such an experience of God brings about a new birth that lifts us high above all deadening enslavement. Rebirth is the gateway into the kingdom of God. From a new relationship with God, an absolutely new energy and joy in life begins. The beginning of life is birth: new life begins with rebirth. Only in God can life, real life begin.
Life is free to unfold only where God has absolute rule. God is life.
Because he was one with God, Jesus could and had to say, "I am the life." Because he fills us with his life, the fountainhead of strength, he had to say, "He that believes in me has life."
We are able to and should live his life because he sends his spirit into our hearts and he himself, with the Father, makes his dwelling in us. Through his strength, we keep his word and do the deeds of his love. Whoever claims that he abides in him is duty-bound to live
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 1 7 0 as he lived. Because he brought God to us as working and unham pered life, Jesus alone can satisfy the hunger and thirst for living righteousness. Only Jesus, in his human existence, has put into action the vital energy that comes from perfect love. Only he can reveal God to us as life. Only Jesus, who is one with the Father, who made the life of love an historical reality on earth – only Jesus can disclose to us human beings the mystery and the power of life.
Through the power of the indwelling spirit of God, by which Jesus drove out all other spirits, the rule of God has come to us. Through the life of Jesus, we shall know what it means to belong to the kingdom of God. How dare we speak of this kingdom if we are not prepared to live here and now, in deed and in truth, as Jesus lived, to place here and now all circumstances of our life under God's rule? When we pray for God's kingdom to come, we ought to stop and ask ourselves whether we are prepared, whether we want to accept and represent all the changes that God's rule involves.
Jesus shows us that the kingdom of God means recognizing the absolute supremacy of the highest will, the will to love. The final kingdom is the perfect realization of the will of God, who is life and love. The unconditional nature of God's life and God's love will not let itself be restricted. God's will does not allow any other will to stand. The rule of love will not ally itself with anything that curtails love, restricts it, or limits it. God's rule will not tolerate any rival authority. The kingdom of God is power because it is the righ teousness of God, the peace of Jesus Christ, and joy in the Holy
Spirit.
For our day and age, God's rule can already begin in hearts where he and his peace reign because Christ has made his dwelling there.
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God has sent the spirit of the Son into our hearts. That carries an obligation and an authority with it – all those gripped by this spirit must drive all other spirits from every sphere of life. The kingdom of God means power to make its spiritual laws valid, also for the outward form of human life. The justice and righteousness valid in God's eyes rules so effectively through the Holy Spirit that it can build up social justice – spoken about by the prophets – in the entire surroundings of those who let their lives be governed by it.
All spirits of human privilege and social injustice are cast out by the Holy Spirit.
Peace ruling in people's hearts as God's unity enables them to become builders and bearers of outward peace. From the church of God as the center, the driving-out of all spirits of unpeace, war, and civil war, like the spirit of competition and private property, will take place. Joy in the love of God fills the believing heart with such overflowing joy that it must go out to all in love. As recipients of