Jesus Christ is the true book of life.
The Forty-Fifth Letter.
Jesus Christ is the true book of life.
Beloved friend and brother in the grace of God!
May Jesus Christ, the true book of life, so imprint Himself in the ground of our soul that we may become His living copies and letters, written by His Spirit, legible to all men! To that end, let us study diligently in this book! There is no danger that the much reading in this book should injure our understanding; and were that even to happen, it would be so only in the eyes of the world, whose greatest wisdom is folly with God.
I hope, then, and wish from the bottom of my soul, that the Father of our Lord Jesus would daily more transfigure and magnify His Son in us, so that thereupon all else in the creature might become small and nothing to us, and our heart might say in truth: Jesus, Jesus, nothing but Jesus shall be my desire and my aim!
German
Der fünfundvierzigste Brief.
JEsus Christus ist das wahre Buch des Lebens.
Geliebter Freund und Bruder in der Gnade GOttes!
JEsus Christus, das wahre Buch des Lebens, wolle sich selber in dem Grunde unserer Seele dermaßen abdrücken, daß wir Seine lebendigen Copien und Briefe, durch Seinen Geist geschrieben, werden mögen, welche von allen Menschen können gelesen werden!
— 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 short, concentrated letter to a friend built on one striking image: Christ as "the true book of life." Tersteegen's prayer is that Jesus would so "imprint Himself in the ground of our soul" that we ourselves become "His living copies and letters, written by His Spirit, legible to all men" — that is, that other people would be able to read Christ in us. "To that end," he urges, "let us study diligently in this book." Then, with a touch of humor, he heads off an objection: there is "no danger that the much reading in this book should injure our understanding," and if it should ever look that way, "it would be so only in the eyes of the world, whose greatest wisdom is folly with God." He closes with a heartfelt wish that "the Father of our Lord Jesus would daily more transfigure and magnify His Son in us," so that "all else in the creature might become small and nothing to us" — and the letter ends on a one-line confession that could stand as his whole motto: "Jesus, Jesus, nothing but Jesus shall be my desire and my aim!"
A few words and echoes.
- The true book of life. The governing image — Christ as a book we study, and into whose likeness we are "imprinted" — reworks Paul's picture of believers as "the epistle of Christ… written not with ink, but with the Spirit… known and read of all men" (2 Corinthians 3:2–3).
- Reading that looks like madness. His wry aside — that deep absorption in Christ may seem to "injure our understanding" in "the eyes of the world" — leans on Paul's reversal, "the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God" (1 Corinthians 3:19).
- Magnify His Son in us. His central prayer, that the Father would "transfigure and magnify His Son in us," makes Christ's growing greatness the measure by which everything else "in the creature" shrinks to "small and nothing."
- Nothing but Jesus. The closing motto — "Jesus, Jesus, nothing but Jesus" — is one of the most concentrated statements of Tersteegen's spirituality: a single-hearted desire that leaves room for no rival. (It is set in ordinary type in the original, not as an emphatic display line.)
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-045 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.