The cross beckons us

The Sermon on the Mount is not law that can save us; it is, rather, the texture of the life of those who have died with Christ and are now made alive with him through resurrection (e.g., blessed are those who mourn, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who turn the other cheek, etc.). The disciple is called to the cross, to come and follow Jesus into death. And this is not because Jesus’s call seeks masochism, but rather because Jesus’s call is the gift of giving us new life through the Stellvertretung (the place-sharing) of Jesus’s very person. The disciple is called to the cross because it is from the cross that Jesus calls us, calling us to carry our cross, calling us to love the person of our neighbor in and through suffering of the cross that they bear.—Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker, page 189