Letters · Erster Band · Theil I (1773)

A hearty wish to sink away from self, and to give oneself over to God.

Bd I · Th I · Brief 55 · Der fünfundfünfzigste Brief

Addressee — Gottfried Luther Stetius (1691–1758), of Solingen / Krefeld — one of the six 1716 Neutäufer (imprisoned in Düsseldorf and Jülich alongside Johann Lobach; after their 1720 release they lived together in a "klein Häusgen" at Krefeld). Addressed "Lieber Bruder!" (the 1773 body is first-person plural throughout, "unsere Hertzen … uns").
Date — 22 May 1736, from Mülheim an der Ruhr.
Provenance — translated from the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften (Bd I), collated against the 1773 first edition (both PD)

The Fifty-Fifth Letter.

A hearty wish to sink away from self, and to give oneself over to God.

Dear brother!

I desire to offer up our hearts most inwardly to the exalted and anointed King Jesus, that He may look upon them in grace, may bless them, and make them ever more like His Jesus-heart, and at last wholly one therewith! The overflowing riches of the goodness and grace of the Lord allure us mightily to trust wholly in Him, and to await all things from His divine hand. Our miseries, which are deep and unspeakably many, should by no means hinder us therein, but rather press us the more — to sink away from our own selves the sooner and the gladlier, and to give ourselves over to the eternal love of God, so inwardly near to us, whose wise and mighty hands can build upon our nothingness a great edifice of holiness, unto His eternal glorification. I perceive ever more the force of the truth that Jesus speaks: That in heaven there shall be more joy over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine righteous.

Let us forget our own selves, and let ourselves be grounded in Jesus, who loveth us for His own sake. Amen!

❦

German

Der fünfundfünfzigste Brief.

Herzlicher Wunsch, sich selbst zu entsinken und GOtt zu überlassen.

Lieber Bruder!

Ich begehre unsere Herzen dem erhöheten und gesalbten König JEsu innigst aufzuopfern, daß Er sie in Gnaden ansehe, segne, und Seinem JEsusherzen immer ähnlicher, und endlich ganz eins damit mache!

— 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 compact, ardent letter about self-abandonment — its two movements named in the heading and carried through the body: to "sink away from self," and to "give oneself over to God." Tersteegen's opening desire is to "offer up our hearts most inwardly to the exalted and anointed King Jesus," that He would "make them ever more like His Jesus-heart, and at last wholly one therewith." His encouragement is that God's own goodness draws us: "the overflowing riches of the goodness and grace of the Lord allure us mightily to trust wholly in Him." Then comes the letter's most striking reversal. Our "miseries, which are deep and unspeakably many," should not hold us back — "but rather press us the more" toward surrender, "to sink away from our own selves the sooner and the gladlier." Far from disqualifying us, our nothingness is God's building-site: His "wise and mighty hands can build upon our nothingness a great edifice of holiness." He grounds all this in Jesus' own word, "that in heaven there shall be more joy over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine righteous." And it closes in a single breath of self-forgetting trust: "Let us forget our own selves, and let ourselves be grounded in Jesus, who loveth us for His own sake. Amen!"

A few words and echoes.

Sinking away from self. The letter's watchword — to "sink away from self" and be "given over to God" — is Tersteegen's Gelassenheit, self-abandonment. Not self-hatred, but a glad release of one's grip on oneself into the hands of God.
Conformed to the heart of Jesus. His opening prayer is that our hearts be made "ever more like His Jesus-heart, and at last wholly one therewith" — the goal of the inward life stated as a union of hearts, ours reshaped after Christ's.
Misery as a spur, not a barrier. The pastoral heart of the letter: our deep and "unspeakably many" miseries "should by no means hinder us… but rather press us the more" toward God. Unworthiness is turned from an excuse for hanging back into a reason for surrendering sooner.
Building on our nothingness. His boldest image — God's "wise and mighty hands can build upon our nothingness a great edifice of holiness" — echoes the New Testament's "spiritual house" built of living stones (1 Peter 2:5). The foundation God prefers is not our strength but our emptiness.
More joy over one sinner. The letter leans its whole confidence on Christ's parable-saying (Luke 15:7): heaven rejoices more over "one sinner that repenteth" than over the settled righteous — the assurance that the repentant, self-despairing soul is exactly the object of God's joy.

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Erster Band, I. Theil, Brief 55 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-055.html.

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