Letters · Erster Band · Theil I (1773)

A blessing for a Good Friday.

Bd I · Th I · Brief 9 · Der neunte Brief

Addressee — "Vielgeliebte Freundin und Schwester in Christo" — an unnamed woman friend; no personal pronoun in this short blessing.
Date — Good Friday ("Am Charfreitag"); year not given.
Provenance — translated from the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften (Bd I), collated against the 1773 first edition (both PD)

The Ninth Letter.

A blessing for a Good Friday.

Dearly beloved friend and sister in Christ!

Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God — who gave Himself up for us, in incomprehensible love, to death upon the tree of the cross, and surrendered His spirit, in deepest self-abandonment, into the hands of His Father — may He give us grace also, that in the power of His death we may die to all that He Himself is not; until our subtlest self-will, too, in yielded submission, bows its head together with Him, and is given over into His hands as His eternal possession — so that henceforth we may live no longer to ourselves, but to God, in Christ Jesus. Amen.

On Good Friday.

❦

German

Der neunte Brief.

Segenswunsch auf einen Charfreitag.

Vielgeliebte Freundin und Schwester in Christo!

JEsus Christus, der ewige Sohn GOttes, der sich selbst für uns, in unbegreiflicher Liebe, am Stamme des Kreuzes dem Tode übergeben, und Seinen Geist in gründlichster Gelassenheit in die Hände Seines Vaters überliefert hat, der gebe auch uns Gnade, um in der Kraft Seines Todes allem zu sterben …

— Opening lines of the original German. The complete transcription of all 605 letters appears in the forthcoming Encounter Press critical edition; Brief 1 is shown in full as a sample.

German text: public domain (1773–75 first edition / 1845 Gesammelte Schriften).

Translator’s notes

What this letter is. A single sentence of blessing, written for Good Friday. In one long, unbroken breath Tersteegen holds up the dying Christ — who "gave himself up for us… to death upon the tree of the cross" and "surrendered his spirit… into the hands of his Father" — and makes that self-surrender the pattern for our own. His prayer is that, "in the power of his death," we too may "die to all that he himself is not," until even "our subtlest self-will" bows its head with Christ and is given over into the Father's hands, "so that henceforth we may live no longer to ourselves, but to God." It is the whole of his spirituality — dying to self, that God may live in us — compressed into a Good Friday collect.

A few words and echoes.

Into thy hands. The letter turns on Christ's last word from the cross — "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" — the model of a soul's complete surrender.
He bowed his head. Tersteegen prays that our self-will may "bow its head together with him," echoing John's account of Jesus' death — our willfulness dying where his head sank.
The tree of the cross. He calls the cross a "tree," as the apostles did — Christ who bore our sins "on the tree."
No longer to ourselves. The goal, in Paul's words: that "henceforth we may live no longer to ourselves, but to God" — the death of self opening into a life wholly God's.

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Erster Band, I. Theil, Brief 9 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-009.html.

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