Cautiously avoid sin or actively do God's will?

"Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about actively doing God's will."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer*

Bonhoeffer had a lot to say about what it means to be a Christian.  The fact that he was thinking and writing during years when God began to be spelled Fuehrer and the line between Church and state became almost invisible had a lot to do with it. What could have been academic or theoretical questions in another time and space had very real consequences in the Germany of the 1930's.

Who is Jesus?  What does it mean to call Jesus, "Christ"?    What does it mean for me to follow this person?

These were not the questions that were being raised in Lutheran churches during the rise of the National Socialist Party.  "Christian" was a recognized social label, not necessarily a description of a life lived in communion with the risen one.  The fact that Jesus was executed by the state, and was, in fact, a Jew was lost or ignored.

For too many, in Germany and throughout the western world, the cross had become a decoration, a historical fact, but not the center of a life lived in obedient discipleship.  Jesus had become a nice, if slightly misguided, leader of men (!) who called on God with appropriate verses from the Old Testament (Hebrew scriptures).  Faith was a Sunday morning activity and not a total response, a way of life with Christ at its center.

That is what Bonhoeffer was trying to re-capture: a life with Christ at the center.  I am certain he wasn't surprised that following Jesus led to more questions than answers, more dilemmas than solutions.  But that was what he was calling people of faith to do: to put Christ at the center of their lives and then live on. Cost of Discipleship, is an extended discussion of just this question.

So each day we either cautiously avoid sin or step over the threshold of faith and actively do God's will.  What will you decide today?  What will I?

*I apologize but I don't have the source for this and after an long google search, apparently no one else knows it either.  Sorry.