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Greed is related to fornication. An insatiable desire is what they both have in common, and it is what lets the greedy person become enslaved to the world. God's commandment says you shall not covet. Fornicators and greedy people are nothing but desire. Fornicators desire to possess another human being. The greedy desire to possess the things of this world. They seek power and authority, but in so doing they become slaves of the world, to which their hearts cling. Both fornication and greed bring us into contact with the world in a way that stains and defiles us. Both are idolatry, since in either case our hears no longer belong to God and Christ, but to the coveted goods of our own world.

But those who create their own god and their own world, those who allow their own desire to become their god, must inevitably hate other human beings who stand in their way and impede their designs. Strife, hatred, envy, and murder all have the same source: they spring from our own selfish desire. "Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?" (James 4:1f.). Fornicators and greedy persons cannot know love for fellow human beings. They live out of the darkness of their own hearts. By sinning against the body of Christ, they sin against their kindred. The body of Christ makes fornication and love mutually exclusive. The body which I cut off from the community of the body of Christ cannot serve my neighbor. And again, the lack of respect for my own body and for other human beings necessarily leads to an insolent and godless life of excessive self-indulgence, drunkenness, and gluttony. Those who lack respect for their body become slaves to their own flesh, and "their belly will be their God" (Rom. 16:18). The ugliness of this sin consists in the desire of the dead flesh to pamper itself, thus dishonoring us even in our external appearance. All those who live a life of excessive self-indulgence have no part in the body of Christ.

For the church-community this entire world of vices is a thing of the past. It has separated itself from those who indulge in these vices, and is called to do so again and again (1 Cor. 5:9ff.). For "what fellowship is there between light and darkness?" (2 Cor. 6:14ff.). With the latter are "the works of the flesh"; with the former is "the fruit of the Spirit" (Gal. 5:19ff.; Eph. 5:9).

What is the meaning of fruit? The "works" of the flesh are many, but there is only one "fruit" of the Spirit. Works are accomplished by human hands, but the fruit sprouts and grows without the tree knowing it. Works are dead, but fruit is alive and the bearer of seeds which themselves produce new fruit. Works can exist on their own, but fruit cannot exist without a tree. Fruit is always something full of wonder, something that has been created. It is not something willed into being, but something that has grown organically. The fruit of the Spirit is a gift of which God is the sole source. Those bearing this fruit are as unaware of it as a tree is of its fruit. The only thing they are aware of is the power of the one from whom they receive their life. There is no room for praise here, but only the ever more intimate union with the source, with Christ. The saints themselves are unaware of the fruit of sanctification they bear. The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. If they become curious to know something in this matter, if they decide to engage in self-contemplation, then they would have already torn themselves away from the root and their time of bearing fruit would have passed. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Gal. 5:22). It is this passage that sheds the clearest light on the sanctification of the individual, as well as on the holiness of the church-community. The source of both of them is one and the same, namely, community with Christ, community in one and the same body. Just as the separation from the world is visibly accomplished only in an ongoing struggle, so personal sanctification also consists in the struggle of the Spirit against the flesh. In their own lives, only the saints see strife, hardship, weakness, and sin. And the more maturity they gain in the state of sanctification, the more they recognize themselves as being overcome, as those who are dying according to the flesh. "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires" (Gal. 5:24). They still live in the flesh. But because of this very fact, their whole life must now be an act of faith in the Son of God who has begun his own life in them (Gal. 2:20). Christians die daily (1 Cor. 15:31). Even if their flesh is suffering and passing away, their inner being will be restored day by day (2 Cor. 4:6). They dying of the saints according to their flesh is grounded soley in the fact that through the Holy Spirit Christ has begun his own life in them. The saints die in Christ and in his life. Now they no longer need to seek their own self-chosen sufferings with which once again simply to reassure themselves in their flesh. Christ is their daily death and their daily life.

This is why they can fully rejoice in the fact that those who are born of God are no longer able so sin, that sin no longer rules over them, that they have died to sin and now live in the Spirit. "There is therefore nothing to condemn in those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). God is pleased with God's saints. For it is none other than God who is at work in their struggle and their dying. In so doing, God brings their sanctification to fruition. The saints should be completely confident thtat there is fruit, even though it remains deeply hidden from them. However, this does not mean--under the umbrella of the message of forgiveness--that fornication, greed, and hatred of human kindred could once again take hold within the Christian community. It is also wrong to think that the fruit of sanctification could remain invisible. But even where it does become widely visible, where the world, when looking at the Christian community, is compelled to say, as in the earliest days of Christianity, "See how they love one another," it is especially there that the saints will look exclusively and constantly to the one to whom they belong. And, unaware of their goodness, they will ask for the forgiveness of their sins. These very same Christians, who embrace the truth that sin no longer rules over them and that the believer no longer sins, will also confess that "if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just in forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar, and God's word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyoe does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who is the righteous one" (1 John 1:8-2:1). "Forgive us our sins" is what the Lord himself has taught them to pray. And he instructed them to forgive one another without ceasing (Eph. 4:32; Matt. 18:21ff.). By forgiving one another in brother and sisterly love, Christians make room for forgiveness by Jesus within their community. They no longer see the other as the one who has harmed them, but as the one for whom Christ has interceded on the cross pleading for forgiveness. They encounter one another as those who have been sanctified by the cross of Christ. Through dying daily under this cross, their thinking, speaking, and their bodies are being sanctified. It is under this cross that the fruit of sanctification grows.

The community of saints is not the 'ideal' church-community of the sinless and the perfect. It is not the church-community of those without blemish, which no longer provides room for the sinner to repent. Rather it is the church-community that shows itself worthy of the gospel of the forgiveness of sins by truly proclaiming God's forgiveness, which has nothing to do with forgiving oneself. It is the community of those who have truly experienced God's costly grace, and who thereby live a life worthy of the gospel which they neither squander nor discard.

This implies that forgiveness can only be preached within the church-community of saints, where repentance also is being preached; where the gospel is not separated from the proclamation of the law; where sins are not only unconditionally forgiven, but where they are also retained. For it is the will of our Lord himself not to give what is holy, the gospel, to dogs, but to preach it only under the safeguard of the call for repentance. A church-community which does not call sin sin will likewise be unable to find faith when it wants to grant forgiveness of sin. It commits a sin against what is holy; it leads a life unworthy of the gospel. It is an unholy church-community because it squanders the Lord's costly forgiveness. It is not enough to lament the general sinfulness of human beings, even within their good works; that is not preaching of repentance. Rather, specific sins have to be named, punished, and sentenced. That is the proper use of the power of the keys (Matt. 16:19; 18:18; John 20:23) which the Lord entrusted to his church, and about which the reformers still spoke so emphatically. The key that binds and retains sins must be employed within the church-community, too, not only for the sake of what is holy, but also for the sake of the sinners, and for the sake of the church-community itself. For the church-community to live a life worthy of the gospel, it must maintain the practice of church discipline. Just as sanctification brings about the separation of the church-community from the world, so it must also bring about the separation of the world from the church-community. One without the other will remain spurious and false. Being separated from the world, the church-community must exercise internal church discipline.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Discipleship. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004, pp. 265-270.

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Sanctification is therefore possible only within the visible church-community. That is the first point. The visibility of the church-community is a decisive characteristic of sanctification. The church-community's claim to a space of its own within this world, and the concomitant separation from the space of the world, attests that the church-community is in the state of sanctification. For the seal of the Holy Spirit seals off the church-community from the world. By power of this seal, God's church-community must insist on God's claim to the whole world. At the same time, it must claim a specific space for itself within the world, thus drawing a clear dividing line between itself and the world. Since the church-community is the city on the hill, the 'polis' (Matt. 5:14), established on this earth by God and marked with a seal as God's own, its "political" character is an inseparable aspect of its sanctification. The "political ethics" of the church-community is grounded solely in its sanctification, the goal of which is that world be world and community be community, and that, nevertheless, God's word goes out from the church-community to all the world, as the proclamation that the earth and all it contains is the Lord's. That is the 'political' character of the church-community. A merely personal sanctification which seeks to bypass this openly visible separation of the church-community from the world confuses the pious desires of the religious flesh with the sanctification of the church-community, which has been accomplished in Christ's death and is being actualized by the seal of God. It is the deceptive pride and the false spiritual desire of the old, sinful being that seeks to be holy apart from the visible community of Christians. Contempt for the body of Christ as the visible community of justified sinners is what is really hiding behind the apparent humility of this kind of inwardness. It is indeed contempt for the body of Christ, since Christ was pleased visibly to assume my flesh and to carry it to the cross. It is contempt for the community, since I seek to be holy apart from other Christians. It is contempt for sinners, since in self-bestowed holiness I withdraw from my church in its sinful form. Sanctification apart from the visible church-community is mere self-proclaimed holiness.

Sanctification through the seal of the Holy Spirit always places the church in the midst of struggle. The struggle is in the last resort the struggle over this seal, to prevent its being broken, either from within or from without. It is the struggle that seeks to prevent the world from wanting to be the church, and the church from wanting to be world. The struggle of the church for the earthly space which has been given to the body of Christ is the church's sanctification. Separation of the world from the church, and separation of the church from the world, is the holy struggle of the church for God's sacred realm on earth.

This sacred realm is possible only within the visible church-community. But, and this is the second point, by the fact of its being separated from the world, the church-community lives within God's sacred realm. Likewise, in the midst of the church-community there still lives a piece of the world within this sacred realm. This is why the saints are called to act in all things in a manner which is worthy of their calling and of the gospel (Eph. 4:1; Phil. 1:27; Col. 1:10; 1 Thess. 2:12). However, the only way they will be worthy is by daily reminding themselves of the gospel from which they live. "But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified" (1 Cor. 6:11). To live out of this daily reminder is what constitutes sanctification for the saints. For the message by which they are called to be worthy is the message that the world and the flesh have died; that they have been crucified and have died with Christ on the cross and in their baptism; that sin can no longer rule since its royal power has already been broken; and that it is, therefore, no longer possible for a Christian to sin. "Those who have been born of God do not sin" (1 John 3:9).

The break has been made. The "former" way of life (Eph. 4:22) has been brought to an end. "For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light" (Eph. 5:8). Formerly, they committed the shameful and "unfruitful works of the flesh." Now, the Holy Spirit produces in them the fruit of sanctification.

Christians must therefore no longer be called "sinners," provided sinners are understood as those who live subject to the power of sin (for the only exception, see Paul's self-designation in 1 Tim. 1:15). Rather, Christians were once sinners, godless, enemies (Rom. 5:8,10, and Gal. 2:15, 17). But now they are saints for the sake of Christ. As saints, they are reminded and admonished to be what they are. They are not required in their sinful state to be holy. That would be an impossibility, a complete relapse into the attempt to earn salvation by works and thus be blasphemy against Christ. Instead, the saints are called to be holy. For they are sanctified in Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

The life of the saints stands out in contrast against a terribly dark background. The dark works of the flesh are completely brought into the open by the bright light of life in the Spirit: "adultery, fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, emnities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, hatred, murder, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these" (Gal. 5:19-21). All these no longer have any place in the community of Christ. They have been dismissed, judged on the cross, and brought to an end. From the very beginning Christians are told that "those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God" (Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:5; 1 Cor. 6:9; Rom. 1:32). These sins separate us from eternal salvation. If one of these vices is, nevertheless, discovered within the church-community, then the consequence must be exclusion from the community's life altogether (1 Cor. 5:1ff.).

It is striking that the so-called catalogs of vices largely agree on the sins they list. Topping the list is nearly always the sin of fornication, which is incompatible with the new life of a Christian. What follows most frequently is the sin of greed (1 Cor. 5:10; 6:10; Eph. 4:19; 5:3, 5; Col. 3:5; 1 Thess. 4:4ff.), which in some cases can be combined with the former as "impurity" and "idolatry" (1 Cor. 5:10; 6:9; Gal. 5:3, 19; Col. 3:5, 8). Mentioned next are the sins against love for brothers and sisters, and finally the sin of excessive self-indulgence.

It is certainly no accident that fornication is the first sin mentioned in these lists. The reason for this is not to be found in the particular cultural context of the time, but in the particular nature of this sin. Fornication is the recurrence of Adam's sin, of the craving to be like God, the aspiration to be the creator of life, the desire to rule rather than serve. It is the sin in which we transgress the boundaries God has set for us, and in which we abuse God's creatures. It was Israel's sin to deny the faithfulness of its Lord again and again, and "by engaging in fornication with idols" (1 Cor. 10:7[-8]), Israel became dependent on them. Fornication is first and foremost a sin against God the Creator. For a Christian, however, it is also a particularly flagrant way of sinning against the body of Christ itself, for a Christian's body is a member of the body of Christ. It belongs to Christ alone. Bodily union with a prostitute destroys the spiritual communion with Christ. All those who rob Christ of their bodies and lend them to sin have separated themselves from him. Fornication is sin against one's own body. However, Christians must know that their body is also the temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in them (1 Cor. 6:13ff.). Their bodies are in such intimate communion with Christ that Christians cannot with their bodies belong also to the world. The community of the body of Christ prohibits the sin against one's own body. The fornicator cannot escape the wrath of God (Rom. 1:29; 1 Cor. 5:1f.; 7:2; 10:7; 2 Cor. 12:21; Heb. 12:16; 13:4). Christians are chaste; they surrender their body completely to the service of the body of Christ. They know that with the suffering and death of Christ's body on the cross their own bodies are also affected, and they are given over to death. Being in community with the tortured and transfigured body of Christ liberates Christians from disorderliness in matters of bodily life. The unbridled passions of the body die a daily death in this community. With discipline and chastity Christians use their bodies exclusively to serve and to build up the body of Christ, the church-community. This also holds true within a Christian marriage, which is itself thus transformed into a part of the body of Christ.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Discipleship. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004, pp. 261-265.

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The proclamation of Christ's death is for us the proclamation of our justification. What incorporates us into the body of Christ, that is, into his death and resurrection, is the sacrament of baptism. Just as Christ died once and once only, so we are baptized and justified once and for all. Both baptism and justification are unrepeatable events in the strictest sense. What can be repeated is only the recollection of what happened to us once and for all; it is, in fact, not only capable of, but in need of, daily repetition. Nevertheless, such recollection is something different from the actual content of the event to which this recollection refers. There is no repetition possible for whoever loses the content of the event. The Letter to Hebrews is right (6:5f. and 10:26f.). If the salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? Those who are baptized and told "Do you not know ...?" (Rom. 6:3; 1 Cor. 3:16 and 6:19) and "So you also must consider yourselves having died away to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 6:11). Everything has already taken place, not only on the cross of Jesus, but also as far as you are concerned. You have been separated from sin, you have died, you are justified. God has thus completed God's work. Through righteousness, God has established God's realm of holiness on earth. This realm of holiness is named Christ or the body of Christ. The separation from sin has been accomplished by the sinner's death in Jesus Christ. God has a community which has been justified, and thus freed from sin. It is the community of the disciples of Jesus, the communion of saints. They have been accepted into God's holy realm, indeed they are God's holy realm, God's temple. They have been taken out of the world and live in a new space of their own in the midst of the world.

From now on, Christians in the New Testament are "the saints." The other conceivable name, "the just," only named is not used. It is not equally capable of describing the full content of the gift received. It rather refers to the unrepeatable event of baptism and justification. True, the recollection of this event is in need of daily repetition. It is also true that the saints remain justified sinners. But together with the unrepeatable gift of baptism and justification and its daily recollection, Christ's death also warrants for us another gift, namely, the preservation of the life of those who are justified until judgment day. Living within this divine preservation is the process of sanctification. Both gifts, justification as well as sanctification, spring from the same source, namely, Jesus Christ, the crucified one (1 Cor. 1:2 and 6:11). Both gifts have the same content, namely, community with Christ. Both gifts belong inseparably together. However, just because of this connection between them, they are not simply one and the same. While justification appropriates to Christians the deed God has already accomplished, sanctification promises them God's present and future action. Whereas, in justification, believers are being included in the community with Jesus Christ through Christ's death that took place once and for all, sanctification, on the other hand, preserves them in the sphere into which they have been placed. It keeps them in Christ, within the church-community. While the primary issue in justification is our relationship to the law, the decisive factor in sanctification is our separation from the world in expectation of Christ's coming again. While justification incorporates the individuals into the church-community, sanctification preserves the church-community together with all the individuals. Justification liberates believers from their sinful past. Sanctification makes it possible for them to stay close to Christ, to persevere in their faith, and to grow in love. It is perhaps possible to think of the relation between justification and sanctification as analogous to the relation between creation and preservation. Justification is the new creation of the new human being. Sanctification is their preservation and safekeeping unto the day of Jesus Christ.

Sanctification is the fulfillment of the will of God, who says: "You shall be holy, for I am holy," and "I, the Lord, I who sanctify you, am holy." This fulfillment is brought about by God the Holy Spirit, and in it God's work in us finds its completion. The work of the Holy Spirit is the "seal" with which believers are being marked as God's own possession until the day of salvation. Just as before they had been held in bondage under the law as in a locked prison (Gal. 3:23), so now the believers are locked "in Christ," marked with God's own seal, the Holy Spirit. No one may break this seal. It has been secured by God, and they key is in God's hand. This means that God has now taken complete possession of those whom God has gained in Christ. The circle has been closed. In the Holy Spirit we have become God's own. Secured from the world by an unbreakable seal, the community of saints awaits its final deliverance. The church-community moves through the world like a sealed train passing through foreign territory. Just as Noah's ark had to be covered "inside and out with pitch" (Gen. 6:14) in order to be preserved throughout the flood, so does the journey of the sealed church-community resemble the passage of the ark through the floodwaters. The goal of this sealing-off is redemption, deliverance, salvation (Eph. 4:30; 1:14; 1 Thess. 5:23; 1 Peter 1:5 et passim) on the day of Christ's second coming. Those who have been sealed are being assured of reaching their goal by a pledge, which is none other than the Holy Spirit, "...so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God's own people, to the praise of his glory" (Eph. 1:12-14).

The sanctification of the church-community consists in its being separated by God from that which is unholy, from sin. Its sanctification consists in having become God's own chosen people through being sealed off, in having become God's earthly dwelling place, the place from which judgment and reconciliation go forth to all the world. Sanctification means that Christians now are completely oriented toward and preserved unto the day of Christ's future coming, toward which they travel.

For the community of saints this implies three things. First, its sanctification will manifest itself in a clear separation from the world. Its sanctification will, second, prove itself through conduct that is worthy of God's realm of holiness. And, third, its sanctification will be hidden in waiting for the day of Jesus Christ.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Discipleship. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004, pp. 258-261.

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The 'ekklesia' of Christ, the community of disciples, is no longer subject to the rule of this world. True, it still lives in the midst of the world. But it already has been made into one body. It is the holy church (Eph. 5:27), the church-community of saints (1 Cor. 14:34). Its members are the saints called by God (Rom. 1:7), sanctified in Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:2), chosen and set apart before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). The goal of their call to follow Jesus Christ, indeed, of their being chosen before the foundation of the world, was that they be holy and blameless (Eph. 1:4). This is the reason why Christ surrendered his body unto death, so as to present those who are his own as holy, blameless, and irreproachable before him (Col. 1:22). The fruit of being freed from sin by Christ's death is that those who once surrendered their bodies as instruments of unrighteousness are now able to use them in the service of righteousness, as instruments of their sanctification (Rom. 6:19-22).

God alone is holy. God is holy, both in being completely set apart from the sinful world and in the foundation of a realm of holiness in the midst of the world. Thus, after the Egyptians have perished, Moses and the children of Israel sing a hymn of praise to the Lord who delivered God's people from the slavery of the world: "Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders? You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed them. In your steadfast mercy you led the people whom you redeemed; you guided them by your strength to your holy abode.... You brought them in and planted them on the mountain of your own possession, the place, O Lord, that you made your abode, the holy place, O Lord that your hands have established" (Exod. 15:11ff.). God's holiness conssists in establishing a divine dwelling place, God's realm of holiness in the midst of the world, as the source of both judgment and redemption (Psalm 99 et al.). It is in this realm of holiness that the holy one enters into a relationship with God's people. This takes place through reconciliation, which can be attained only in holiness (Lev. 16:16f.). God enters into a covenant with God's people. God sets them apart, makes them God's possession, and vouches for this covenant. "You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy" (Lev. 19:2), and "I the Lord, I who sanctify you, am holy" (Lev. 21:8)--this is the foundation on which this convenant rests. All other laws that the people are given and asked to keep in righteousness have the holiness of God and of God's community as their prerequisite and their goal.

Just as God, the holy one, is separated from anything common, and from sin, so too is the community of God's holy realm. God has chosen it. God has made it the community of the divine covenant. In this realm of holiness God has reconciled and purified it. Now this place of holiness is the temple, which is the body of Christ. The body of Christ thus is the fulfillment of God's will to establish a holy community. Set apart from world and sin to be God's own possession, the body of Christ is God's realm of holiness in the world. It is the dwelling place of God and God's Holy Spirit.

How does this come about? How, out of sinful human beings, does God create a community of saints that is totally separaated from sin? How can God be defended against the accusation of being unrighteous, if God enters into a relationship with sinners? How can the sinner be righteous and God stil remain righteous?

God is justified by God; God supplies the proof of divine righteousness. The cross of Jesus Christ works the miracle of God's self-justification. Now God is justified before God and before us (Rom. 3:21ff.). The goal for the sinner is to be separated from sin and yet to be able to live before God. However, it is only through death that the sinner can be separated from sin. The sinner's very life is enmeshed in sin to such an extent that deliverance from sin can be brought about for the sinners only through their death. God can remain righteous only by killing the sinner. And yet is the goal for the sinner to live and to be holy before God? How can this come about?

It comes about by God becoming human. In God's Son, Jesus Christ, God assumes our flesh. In Christ's body, God carries our human flesh into death on the cross. God kills the son of God who bears our flesh; and with the Son, God kills everything that bears the name of earthly flesh. Now it is evident that no one is good but the triune God, that no one is righteous but God alone. Now, through the death of God's own Son, God has supplied the terrible proof of the divine righteousness (Rom. 3:26). In the judgment of wrath on the cross, God had to deliver all of humanity unto death so that God alone would be righteous. God's righteousness is revealed in the death of Jesus Christ. The death of Jesus Christ is the place where God has supplied the gracious proof of God's own righteousness, the only place from that moment on where God's righteousness dwells. Whoever could participate in this death would thereby also participate in God's righteousness. But now Christ has assumed our flesh, and in his body has borne our sin onto the wood of the cross (1 Peter 2:24). What happened to him happened to all of us. He took part in our life and in our dying, and thus we came to take part in his life and his dying. If God's righteousness required Christ's death as its proof, then we are with Christ at the place where God's righteousness dwells, at his cross, for he bore our flesh. As those who have been killed, we thus come to take part in God's own righteousness in Jesus' death. God's righteouness, which causes us sinners to die, is, in Jesus' death, God's righteousness for us. Since in Jesus' death God's righteousness is established, and we are included in Jesus' death, God's righteousssness is established for us as well. God proves God's righteoussness, demonstrating "that God alone is righteous and that God justifies the one who has faith in Jesus" (Rom. 3:26). Thus, the justification of sinners consists in God alone being righteous and sinners being totally and utterly unrighteous, rather than in granting sinners their own righteousness alongside that of God. Every desire to possess our own righteousness as well cuts us off completely from being justified by God's own, unique righteousness. God alone is righteous. Looking at the cross, we recognize this as the judgment which has been rendered over us as sinners. Those who in faith see themselves included in Jesus' death on the cross, the place where as sinners they are condemned to die, receive God's righteousness, which triumphs in this very place. They are made righteous precisely as those who neither can be nor desire to be righteous themselves, but who recognize that God alone is righteous. For as human beings we cannot be made right and ready before God except in recognizing that God alone is righteous and we are sinners throughout. The question of how, as sinners, we can be righteous before God is really the question of how, in our encounter with God, God alone can be righteous. Our justification is grounded exclusively in God's justifying God, "so that you [God] may be justified in your words, and prevail in your judging" (Rom. 3:4).

The only thing that matters is God's victory over our unrighteousness, that God alone be the one who is righteous. This victory of God has been won in the cross. This is why this cross is not only judgment but reconcilation for all who believe that, in the death of Jesus, God alone is righteous, and in that way recognize their sin. It is God's righteousness which brings about this reconciliation. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor. 5:19ff.). "[God was] not counting their sin against them"--but instead bore the sin, and as its consequence suffered the death of the sinner. "God has set up the word of reconciliation among us." This messages seeks to find faith, the faith that God alone is righteous and in Jesus has become our righteousness. However, between Christ's death and the message of the cross lies Christ's resurrection. Only as the cross of the risen one can his cross have power over us. The message of the one who was crucified is always already the message of the one who did not remain in death's bondage. "So we are messengers on behalf of Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God." The message of reconciliation is Christ's own word. He is the rison one who, in the word of the apostle, gives witness of himself as the one who was crucified: find yourselves included in Jesus Christ's death, and thus in God's righteousness which in his dying is bestowed on us as free gift. Those who will find themselves in Jesus' death see the righteousness of God alone. "For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." The innocent one is killed because he bears our sinful flesh; he is being hated and cursed by God and the world; he is made sinful for the sake of our flesh. But in his death we find God's righteousness.

We are in him by virtue of his incarnation. He died for us so that we who are sinners would in him becomes God's righteousness, precisely as sinners who are pronounced free from sin by virtue of the righteousness of God alone. If in God's eyes Christ has become our sin, which must undergo judgment, then we have in him become righteousness (Rom. 10:3, Phil. 3:9). Rather, in a very strict sense, this is solely the righteousness of God. Thus, God's righteousness is such that we as sinners become God's righteousness. Our, or rather God's, righteousness (Isa. 54:7) is such that God alone is righteous and we are sinners, accepted by God. God's righteousness is Christ himself (1 Cor. 1:30). And Christ is "God with us," "Immanuel" (Isa. 7:14), God, our righteousness (Jer. 33:16).

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Discipleship. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004, pp. 253-258.

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In Christ's love. Amen.

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