Encouragement to brotherly freedom, and to yielding to the secret drawing of divine love.
The Hundred and Fourteenth Letter.
Encouragement to brotherly freedom, and to yielding to the secret drawing of divine love.
Beloved sister!
Christ was not ashamed to call us brethren, since He became partaker of our flesh and blood. Hebrews 2. How much less ought we to account ourselves too great for it — we who are subject not only to like temptations, but to like sins! Only use this freedom boldly with me! I will gladly be and remain your brother, however wretched you find yourself, because I know that you do not want and love your sins and miseries, but God, and a pure heart.
Use this freedom, too, only with Jesus; name and acknowledge Him as your Friend and Brother, that no false humility may stand yet more in the way of your sanctification than all your miseries!
If it were true that I were spiritual (as you, in love, think of me), then indeed I should find my lesson — both as regards myself, and as regards you and other burdened ones — in the first two verses of the sixth chapter to the Galatians. Only look it up, and be assured that I feel your little bundle a little along with you, however much I otherwise have often to bear of my own.
Be of good cheer in God! He it is Himself who awakens and sustains in you the penetrating longing of your spirit after Him, your Origin: should He now make a hunger, and never be willing to still that hunger? Who dare think that of the Eternal Love? He it is Himself who gives you the upright mind to let all things go gladly (I add: and gladly to suffer all things), only to attain thereto; and precisely that, too, belongs thereto: All must be given for All. We must go out of ourselves if we are to go in unto God — all, however, in faith, and through the secret drawing of divine love in the ground of the soul. Yield yourself to this drawing wholly, and forever! He will lead you thither, where your spirit must be, to be well forever. Let no occasion slip by of paying your best Friend a visit in the closet of the heart. Ah, how gladly He sees you come, and how needful and wholesome it would be for your soul! Lord Jesus! Draw us, and we shall run! Amen. Brother H. greets you heartily, along with me. I remain
Your weak brother.
Mülheim, 3 June 1731.
P.S. See, in today's Gospel, whether there be not room for you too? Adieu.
German
Der hundertundvierzehnte Brief.
Aufmunterung zur brüderlichen Freiheit, und zur Ueberlassung an den geheimen Zug der göttlichen Liebe.
Geliebte Schwester!
Christus hat sich nicht geschämet, uns Brüder zu heißen, da Er unseres Fleisches und Blutes theilhaftig worden. Hebr.
— 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 warm, freeing letter to Griesenbeck — an encouragement to what Tersteegen calls "brotherly freedom." Because Christ "was not ashamed to call us brethren," having taken on "our flesh and blood," we have no business feeling too lowly to claim that kinship. So, he says, use that freedom boldly — both with him ("I will gladly be and remain your brother, however wretched you find yourself") and, above all, with Jesus himself: "name and acknowledge Him as your Friend and Brother," and don't let a "false humility" block your own sanctification. The center of the letter is a beautiful reassurance: the very longing she feels for God is not her achievement but God's work in her — "should He make a hunger, and never be willing to still that hunger?" So the way forward is simply to let go and yield: "All must be given for All"; go out of yourself into God; surrender wholly to "the secret drawing of divine love in the ground of the soul." It closes with one of his tenderest images — pay your best Friend "a visit in the closet of the heart," for "how gladly He sees you come" — and the cry, "Lord Jesus! Draw us, and we shall run!" A postscript points her to that Sunday's Gospel of the great supper: is there not "room for you too"?
A few words and echoes.
- Brotherly freedom. The boldness to treat Christ as a real Brother and Friend — grounded in Hebrews 2, where the Son "is not ashamed to call them brethren" because he shares their flesh and blood.
- False humility. A humility that keeps its distance from grace — feeling too unworthy to come — which Tersteegen says blocks sanctification more than one's actual sins do.
- "Bear one another's burdens." His allusion to Galatians 6:1–2 — "I feel your little bundle a little along with you" — the law of Christ that we carry each other's loads.
- The hunger God makes. His deep consolation: the ache for God is itself God's gift and pledge — he would not awaken a hunger he did not mean to satisfy.
- "All must be given for All." The whole self surrendered to gain the whole God — go out of self, in faith, into the "secret drawing" of love.
- The closet of the heart. His picture of interior prayer as visiting one's best Friend in a private inner chamber (an echo of Matthew 6:6) — "how gladly He sees you come."
- "Draw us, and we shall run." From the Song of Solomon (1:4), "Draw me, we will run after thee" — turned into a shared cry.
- "Room for you too." The postscript points to that day's Gospel (Luke 14) — the great supper where, even when many are gathered, the servant reports, "yet there is room."
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-114 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.