Letters · Zweiter Band · Theil III (1775)

To a sick person; that she should turn away from all things, and sink with trust into Jesus.

Bd II · Th III · Brief 39 · Der neununddreißigste Brief

Addressee — Salutation Geliebte Freundin und Schwester! → "Beloved friend and sister!" (plain Geliebte — Rule B does NOT apply).
Date — Mülheim, 24 October 1743 — the print dateline reads Mülheim, den 24. Oct. 1743. Tersteegen is back at Mülheim (the July letters were from Amsterdam); written the same day as Brief 40.
Provenance — *Translated from the public-domain 1775 first edition (Theil III, pp. 115–117), in normalized GS-1845 house orthography. All rendered words are from public-domain prints.

The Thirty-Ninth Letter.

To a sick person; that she should turn away from all things, and sink with trust into Jesus.

Beloved friend and sister!

I hear that the gracious Saviour is visiting you with a sickness. Now, He would visit your heart at the same time with His healing grace; and this is what we too have sought, and still seek, to obtain for you from His divine Majesty — as also that He would give you all needful submission and surrender into His good will! God surely has your full redemption and salvation in view, even in this visitation. As far as you can now collect yourself, give yourself wholly to Him, that His holy purpose may only be reached in you.

God's favor and fellowship are alone to be sought and prized: health, life, and all temporal pleasures are nothing to be esteemed beside them. So then let your whole heart turn away, irrevocably, from all else! Confess to the dearest Saviour all your misery and the follies you have committed, and that without His grace you will nevermore be blessed. O yes! that is more the truth than you can yet believe; but trust it of this precious Jesus, that He can and will forgive you all your sins, and make you holy and blessed through His grace alone — for He has redeemed us with His blood. In this trust, sink yourself — as naked and wretched as you are — into this most gracious Redeemer. And should your misery and unfaithfulness come before your eyes a thousand times, still turn yourself, every time, with all of it, into this most gracious Redeemer; so it cannot fail you, whether it now go to life or to death.

I know that you are still far from being what you must be; but even if you should live ever so long, you will still become holy by no other way than this; and if you die, you can be saved by this way — namely, that you renounce all things, and turn yourself, with sorrow and with trust, into the grace of Jesus. In this grace alone is your salvation. May this grace embrace you when you must die, and give you even now what you need, to suffer in a way blessed and pleasing to God! Amen, dear Saviour! We all greet you, and wish you the blessing.

Your weak fellow-pilgrim.

Mülheim, 24 October 1743.

❦

German

Der neununddreißigste Brief.

An eine kranke Person; daß sie sich von allem abkehren, und mit Vertrauen in JEsum ersenken solle.

Geliebte Freundin und Schwester!

Ich höre, daß der gütige Heiland dich mit einer Krankheit besuchet. Nun, Er will dein Herz zugleich mit seiner heilsamen Gnade besuchen: Und dieses ist es, was wir dir auch haben gesuchet, und noch suchen zu erbitten von seiner göttlichen Majestät, wie auch, daß Er dir alle nöthige Unterwerfung und Ueberlassung in seinen guten Willen geben möge!

— 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 letter to a woman on her sickbed — we do not know who; the old editor printed it without a name. Tersteegen had heard she was ill, and he writes not to promise recovery but to turn the sickness into an occasion: "the gracious Saviour is visiting you with a sickness. Now, He would visit your heart at the same time with His healing grace." The illness is a visitation, and its purpose is her deliverance.

The counsel is the same he gives the dying and the despairing everywhere in these letters, and it is uncompromising: prize God's favor above health and life, confess everything, and then — the image that recurs — sink into Christ. "In this trust, sink yourself — as naked and wretched as you are — into this most gracious Redeemer." And if her wretchedness rises before her "a thousand times," she is to do the same thing every time: turn, with all of it, into the Redeemer. Then "it cannot fail you, whether it now go to life or to death." The whole way of salvation, he says, is this one: "that you renounce all things, and turn yourself, with sorrow and with trust, into the grace of Jesus."

A few words and echoes.

the gracious Saviour is visiting you with a sickness. Hebrews 12:6 — "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth"; the sickness read as a gracious visitation.
He has redeemed us with His blood. Revelation 5:9 ("thou… hast redeemed us to God by thy blood"); cf. Ephesians 1:7, 1 Peter 1:18–19.
as naked and wretched as you are. Revelation 3:17 — "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked."
whether it now go to life or to death. Romans 14:8 — "whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's."
that you renounce all things. Luke 14:33 — "whosoever… forsaketh not all that he hath."

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Zweiter Band, III. Theil, Brief 39 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-039.html.

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