Letters · Erster Band · Theil I (1773)

Encouragement to suffer for the love of Jesus. A sigh for cleansing in His blood.

Bd I · Th I · Brief 106 · Der hundertundsechste Brief

Addressee — An Christiana Maria Griesenbeck (née Engels, 1707–1741), Mülheim — his most frequent correspondent; addressed "In JEsu geliebte Freundin und Schwester!" with the polite Ihr/euch.
Date — 3 September 1730, from Mülheim — written a week after receiving her letter ("Heut acht Tag").
Provenance — Translated from the public-domain 1773 first edition (Theil I, pp. 303–304), in normalized GS 1845 orthography, collated against the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften, Hartman's 1819 reprint. All public-domain.

The Hundred and Sixth Letter.

Encouragement to suffer for the love of Jesus. A sigh for cleansing in His blood.

In Jesus beloved friend and sister!

A week ago today I received your welcome little letter. Time did not allow me to write anything back: since then I have been away three or four days, and must set out again tomorrow or the next day. Remember me before God, that He would keep my mind unmoved, in a quiet spirit, before His countenance. As I, then, also nowhere forget your concern, since the Lord brings the wretched now and again into my thoughts.

I testify that I have no little compassion with you in every way, and would gladly help to bear it, so far as God might grant grace thereto. The Lord Jesus will do that which I cannot.

Embrace all your sufferings, outward and inward, for the love of Jesus! Ah, how gladly the Lord sees such a thing! To suffer for God's sake is better than to do wonder-works. You say: You can do or work nothing pleasing to God; then suffer willingly — that will please God more than offering and burnt-offering.

Do but hear: You please God when His cross pleases you. What more can I say to you, to awaken you to willing suffering! To have occasion to please God is, to a loving soul, a welcome gospel. I sigh therefore with you, beloved sister: O God! make me pleasing to Thee in the blood of Jesus! Even as Thou hast, thereby, reconciled me once for all with Thyself upon the trunk of the cross, and hast cleansed my conscience in the forgiveness of my sins, and dost still cleanse it from all dead works through this blood: so let now the power of the blood of Jesus wholly destroy my old man, together with all impurities and self-properties, in the suffering-with and dying-with Jesus; let it pervade, and sweeten through, and quicken, and work through my ground and all the powers of spirit, soul, and body, unto a thorough sanctification! Ah, that my garments were made so bright in the blood of the Lamb, that I might indeed be everlastingly well-pleasing to Thee, in the beauty of my Jesus! Amen! May He make it wholly so! I remain, in haste,

Your weak fellow-combatant.

Mülheim, 3 September 1730.

❦

German

Der hundertundsechste Brief.

Aufmunterung um der Liebe JEsu willen zu leiden. Seufzer um die Reinigung in Seinem Blute.

In JEsu geliebte Freundin und Schwester!

Heut acht Tag hab ich euer angenehmes Brieflein empfangen. Die Zeit ließ nicht zu, etwas zurück zu schreiben: Seitdem bin drei oder vier Tag verreiset gewesen, und muß auch morgen oder übermorgen wieder fort.

— 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, hurried, warm-hearted letter to Christiana Maria Griesenbeck — written in the middle of a week of travel — whose whole aim is to encourage her to welcome suffering. Its striking turn is the reversal it works on her own discouragement: she has written that she can do nothing pleasing to God, and Tersteegen answers that she does not need to — "you please God when His cross pleases you," and simply to have the chance to please God is, to a loving heart, "a welcome gospel." Then, as often happens in his letters, the counsel dissolves into prayer: he "sighs with her" in a first-person plea that the blood of Jesus would reconcile, cleanse, and wholly consume the "old man," until his garments are "made white in the blood of the Lamb" and he stands "everlastingly well-pleasing" in "the beauty of my Jesus." It ends abruptly — "Amen! May He make it wholly so! I remain, in haste."

A few words and echoes.

The sigh (Seufzer). His word for a short, breathed prayer — the letter's second half is one, spoken aloud "with" her rather than at her.
"You please God when His cross pleases you." The letter's hinge: not doing great works but gladly accepting the cross is what pleases God — better, he says, "than to do wonder-works," better than "offering and burnt-offering."
Dead works (Heb. 9). The blood of Christ that "purges the conscience from dead works" — the useless self-effort religion piles up.
The old man. Paul's name for the fallen self that must be "destroyed" and die with Christ, so that the new life may live.
White in the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 7). The vision of the redeemed who "washed their robes… white in the blood of the Lamb" — his image for a conscience and life made clean.

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Erster Band, I. Theil, Brief 106 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-106.html.

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