To a tempted person, that the love of Jesus on the cross takes away all curse and sin.

What this letter is. A Good Friday letter — dated to the very day of the cross — written to a woman recently married and now badly assailed (angefochten): she is tormented by the fear that some "curse" hangs over her for her "past unfaithfulness," and her heart feels stone-hard. Tersteegen answers the temptation with the meaning of the day. The remedy for a heart afraid of a curse is the Crucified who "was made a curse for us."

Almost certainly this is a follow-up to Brief 99: there he had assured the same newly-married friend that her marriage did not cancel her betrothal to Christ; here, a week later, he writes "again" (he says he "lately wrote to her") because that betrothal is now under attack. He develops the bridal image into something startlingly tender: Christ "betrothed Himself to your soul eternally on the stem of the cross," and would "let a droplet of His precious blood fall into your heart" to soften it. The cross is not a threat but an embrace — "Jesus hangs on the cross, and has spread out His arms to receive you" — and she is to come to it exactly as she is, bringing her earthly husband along: "only come, just as you now find yourself… and bring your bodily bridegroom with you."

Against the specific fear of a "curse," he sets Paul flatly: "Jesus has taken away all our curse, since He was made a curse for us." Her sins — everyone's — are "scarcely a straw against the infinite glow of the love of Jesus." And for the felt hardness and the silence of heaven, he gives the counsel of pure Gelassenheit: if the heart seems hard, "draw near to the fire"; if Jesus seems not to hear, "heed it not — I know the heart of Jesus better. Only keep lying at His feet; wait… though it were even unto death." The letter ends on Paul's promise of the unseen: "eye hath not seen… what God has prepared for them that wait on Him."

A few words and echoes.

• "Jesus the Crucified… betrothed Himself on the stem of the cross." 2 Corinthians 11:2, "I have espoused you to one husband… to Christ"; the cross itself as the wedding — the same bridal theme as Brief 99, now centred on Calvary.
• "A droplet of His precious blood." 1 Peter 1:18–19, "redeemed… with the precious blood of Christ"; the blood that softens the stony heart (Ezekiel 36:26, "I will take away the stony heart… and give you an heart of flesh").
• "So infinitely loving a God-man." Tersteegen's GOtt-Mensch — Christ as the theanthropos, God and man in one, the object of the soul's "return-love."
• "Only come, just as you now find yourself." Matthew 11:28, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden" — the pure "come as you are" of grace; no prior fitness required.
• "Jesus hangs on the cross, and has spread out His arms to receive you." Isaiah 65:2, "I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people" — the crucified posture read as an embrace open to the sinner.
• "Jesus has taken away all our curse, since He was made a curse for us." Galatians 3:13, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us" — the letter's doctrinal heart, and the direct answer to her fear of a curse.
• "Scarcely a straw against the infinite glow of the love of Jesus." The disproportion of sin to grace (Romans 5:20, "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound").
• "Keep lying at His feet; wait in resignation." Luke 7:38 (the woman at Jesus' feet); the posture of Gelassenheit — staying put in trust even when nothing is felt.
• "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard… what God has prepared for them that wait on Him." 1 Corinthians 2:9, quoting Isaiah 64:4 — Tersteegen gives it as "them that wait on Him" (Isaiah's phrasing) rather than "them that love him," fitting the letter's counsel to wait.