Quotes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Exerpts from John Piper's 'This Momentary Marriage')

May 23, 2021 Samantha Samuel

Marriage is more than your love for each other...In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal - it is a status, and office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the kind, so it is marriage and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man.

As you gave the ring to one another and have now received it a second time from the hand of the pastor, so love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.

Over the destiny of woman and of man lies the dark shadow of a word of God’s wrath, a burden from God, which they must carry. The woman must bear her children in pain, and in providing for his family the man must reap many thorns and thistles, and labor in the sweat of his brow. This burden should cause both man and wife to call on God, and should remind them of their eternal destiny in his kingdom. Earthly society is only the beginning of the heavenly society, the earthly home an image of the heavenly home, the earthly family a symbol of the fatherhood of God.

Their fellowship is founded solely upon Jesus Christ and this “alien righteousness”. All we can say, therefore, is: the community of Christians springs solely from the biblical and Reformation message of the justification of man through grace alone; this alone is the basis of the longing of Christians for one another.

In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship, least of all a marriage, can survive.

God gives you Christ as the foundation of your marriage. “Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Rom. 15:7)....Don’t insist on your rights, don’t blame each other, don’t judge or condemn each other, don’t find fault with each other, but accept each other as you are, and forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts.

Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together - the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.

Now when the husband is called “the head of the wife”, and it goes on to say “as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5:23), something of the divine splendor is reflected in our earthly relationships, and thus reflection we should recognize and honor. The dignity that is here ascribed to the man lies, not in any capacities or qualities of his work but in the office conferred on him by his marriage. The wife should see her husband clothed in this dignity. But for him it is supreme responsibility.

As the head, it is he who is responsible for his wife, for their marriage, and for their home. On him falls the care and protection of the family; he represents it to the outside world; he is its mainstay and comfort; he is the master of the house, who exhorts, punishes, helps, and comforts, and stands for it before God. It is a good thing, for it is a divine ordinance when the wife honors the husband for his office’s sake, and when the husband properly performs the duties of his office.

God establishes a rule of life by which you can live together in wedlock: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives” (Col. 3:18,19). With your marriage, you are founding a home. That needs a rule of life, and this rule of life is so important that God establishes it himself, because without it everything would be out of joint. You may order your home as you like, except in one thing: the wife is to be subject to her husband and the husband is to love his wife.

Thus it begins; the cross is not a terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die…” Rejoice and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven.” There shall the poor be seen in the halls of joy. With his own hand, God wipes away the tears from the eyes of those who had mourned upon the earth.

He feeds the hungry at his Banquet. There stand the scarred bodies of the martyrs, now glorified and clothed in the white robes of eternal righteousness instead of the rags of sin and repentance. The echoes of this joy reach the little flock below as it stands beneath the cross, and they hear Jesus saying: “Blessed are ye!”

The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer….The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God.

Visitor and visited in loneliness recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body; they receive and meet each other as one meets the Lord, in reverence, humility, and joy...It is true, of course that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day.

Jesus does not enjoin his disciples to marry, but he does sanctify marriage according to the law by affirming its indissolubility and by prohibiting the innocent party from remarrying when the guilty partner has broken the marriage by adultery. This prohibition liberates marriage from selfish, evil desire, and consecrates it to the service of love, which is possible only in a life of discipleship. Jesus does not depreciate the body and its natural instincts, but he does condemn the unbelief which is so often latent in its desires….Even our bodies belong to Christ and have their part in the life of discipleship, for they are members of his Body.

Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God’s holy ordinance, through which he wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to his glory, and calls into his kingdom.

It is from God that parents receive their children, and it is to God that they should lead them.

God makes your marriage indissoluble. “What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Matt. 19:6). God joins you together in marriage; it is his act, not yours. Do not confound your love for one another with God.

God makes your marriage indissoluble, and protects it from every danger that may threaten it from within and without; he will be the guarantor of its indissolubility. It is a blessed thing to know that no power on earth, no temptation, no human frailty can dissolve what God holds together; indeed, anyone who knows that may say confidently: What God has joined together, can no man put asunder. Free from all the anxiety that is always a characteristic of love, you can now say to each other with complete and confident assurance: We can never lose each other now; by the will of God we belong to each other till death.