On the day Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hung by his German Nazi captors he wrote the following words in his journal:
"The key to everything is the "in him." All that we may rightly expect from God, and ask him for, is to be found in Jesus Christ. The God of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with what God, as we imagine him, could do and ought to do. If we are to learn what God promises, and what he fulfills, we must persevere in quiet meditation on the life, sayings, deeds, sufferings, and death of Jesus. It is certain that we may always live close to God and in the light of his presence, and that such living is an entirely new life for us; that nothing is them impossible for us, because all things are possible with God; that no earthly power can touch us without his will, and that danger and distress can only drive us closer to him."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 391
(The hermeneutical key to understanding the letters of the apostle Paul is the phrase "in him," which Paul uses 180 times (including variations).)
