If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity, as one of the trials and tribulations of life. We have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering .
Dietrich BonhoefferNothing 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 oneโs community back from the path of sin.
Dietrich BonhoefferThe gift of Christ is not the Christian religion, but the grace and love of God which culminate in the cross.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer