The name Jesus is to be our All in all, and a Bethesda for our spiritual infirmities.
The Thirty-Sixth Letter.
The name Jesus is to be our All in all, and a Bethesda for our spiritual infirmities.
Dear brother!
Let then only the name Jesus stand ever open to us in spirit, in this year now begun, and unto eternity! Let Him be our hiding-place against every storm; our heart's strengthening in all trials and sufferings; our preservative against all sins; our medicine for the complete driving-out of all the soul's-poison of selfhood; our balm of life, to pervade our weak and languid vital spirit and our withered leaves of virtue, and make them green in Him! In short — may He be our very all, in all things!
Ah, how essential is all of this — and infinitely more is to be found in the salvation-bringing name of Jesus — so that we ought indeed to be ashamed, if we look about us elsewhere after broken cisterns, as though there were no more balm in Gilead. O yes! here is a fullness, an open fountain, so near in the inmost ground — yea, so unspeakably near — from whence the love of God also, through its secret, gentle drawings, already wells up to meet us, and would so gladly draw our parched spirit down into itself, if only we would yield ourselves wholly to it.
Nothing but this one thing — I say it then with you, dear brother, and repeat it with heartfelt delight and longing: nothing but this one thing! namely, with that great multitude of the weak, the blind, the lame, and the withered (John 5), to lay ourselves down in this Bethesda, in this house of mercy and of outflowing, and in a recollected mind to wait for the moving of the water, and to let ourselves down wholly into it, even as we are. We know that these are no empty images, nor are they to remain merely within us, but that it must be brought, full simply and unswervingly, into practice and into experience; and that this alone strengthens and comforts in distress and in death, when all other figments and well-meant occupations scatter like empty chaff.
If we now know this, blessed are we if we do it, and suffer not this goal to be displaced from us! The Lord will work it in us; for He is faithful. Amen!
German
Der sechsunddreißigste Brief.
Der Name JEsus soll uns Alles in Allem, und für unsere geistliche Gebrechen ein Bethesda seyn.
Lieber Bruder!
Es stehe uns dann nur der Name JEsus im Geiste stets offen in diesem angetretenen Jahr und bis in Ewigkeit!
— 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 New-Year letter to a brother — "in this year now begun, and unto eternity" — built entirely on one thing: the name of Jesus. Tersteegen prays that this Name would "stand ever open to us in spirit," and then pours out title after title for it: "our hiding-place against every storm; our heart's strengthening in all trials and sufferings; our preservative against all sins; our medicine for the complete driving-out of all the soul's-poison of selfhood; our balm of life" — that would make our "withered leaves of virtue… green in Him." His summing-up is a single burst: "In short — may He be our very all, in all things!" The second half turns to a picture from the Gospel of John: the pool of Bethesda, where the sick lay waiting for the water to move. That, he says, is what the name of Jesus is for us — "this house of mercy," where we lay ourselves down "with that great multitude of the weak, the blind, the lame, and the withered… even as we are," and wait "for the moving of the water." He insists these are "no empty images" but must be "brought… into practice and into experience," for this alone "strengthens and comforts in distress and in death." He closes with quiet confidence: "The Lord will work it in us; for He is faithful. Amen!"
A few words and echoes.
- The name Jesus as All-in-all. The whole letter is a litany on the Name — hiding-place, strengthening, preservative, medicine, balm — gathered into the cry that "He be our very all, in all things," echoing Paul's hope that God be "all in all."
- Broken cisterns and the balm in Gilead. His warning against looking elsewhere — "after broken cisterns, as though there were no more balm in Gilead" — weaves together two of Jeremiah's images for forsaking the true fountain of God.
- Bethesda. The letter's central figure (John 5): the pool where the sick waited for the troubling of the water. To lie there "in a recollected mind," among the helpless, is his picture of the waiting, receptive soul.
- May He be our all… for He is faithful. Twice the emphatic "He" — pointing to Christ — is set, in his own text, in full capitals; it is rendered here in small capitals. The closing "He is faithful" echoes Paul's assurance that "faithful is he that calleth you."
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-036 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.