The Church is the Church only when it exists for others.
God does not give us everything we want, but He does fulfill His promises...
After death something new begins, over which all powers of the world of death have no more might.
Self-justification and judging others go together, as justification by grace and serving others go together.
Advent creates people, new people.
As long as we let the Word of God be our only armor, we can look confidently into the future.
While it is good that we seek to know the Holy One, it is probably not so good to presume that we ever complete the task.
Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.
Death is the supreme festival on the road to freedom.
Sometimes we just need a firm kick in the pants. An unsmiling expectation that if we mean all these wonderful things we talk about and sing about, then let’s see something to prove it.
Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.
The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and His work become the one and only thing that is vital between us.
It is much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.
To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.
Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ.
Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one’s community back from the path of sin.
Being free means “being free for the other,” because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free.
Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.
Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.
I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me.