Ash Wednesday, Lent begins. “Jesus, I will ponder now on Thy holy passion.” Or not. I recall a woman who said, “It was nice that Jesus died for sins but He didn’t have to do it for me.”
From Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “One extreme thing must be said. To forego self-conceit…means, in all soberness and without mincing the matter, to consider oneself the greatest of sinners. This arouses all the resistance of the natural man, but also that of the self-confident Christian. It sounds like an exaggeration, like an untruth. Yet even Paul said of himself that he was the foremost of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15); he said this specifically at the point where he was speaking of his service as an apostle. If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. My sin is of necessity the worst, the most grievous, the most reprehensible.” (Life Together, 96)
Martin Luther wrote, “As soon as God’s Word shoots up and spreads through you, the devil persecutes you.” (John Kleinig, “What Makes a Theologian,” 35) If you’re going to be honest to God about your sin, the devil will be close by.
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