Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they won't bear their weight, and these places are not seen.

Our obligation to love, honor and obey any being is in proportion to his loveliness, honor and authority. Therefore, sin against God, being a violation of infinite obligations must be a crime infinitely heinous and so deserving infinite punishment. If there is any evil in sin against God it is infinite evil.

The God that holds you over the pit of Hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked . . .1

now I saw it was so far from any goodness in me to own myself spiritually dead and destitute of all goodness that, on the contrary, my mouth would be forever stopped by it; and it looked as dreadful to me to see myself and the relation I stood in to God—I a sinner and criminal, and He a great Judge and Sovereign—as it would be to a poor trembling creature to venture off some high precipice.

Sinners in the hands of an angry God.

Bonhoeffer was simply saying that if we wished truly to live, we must be prepared to die. And this was not bad news at all, but rather was the very best of good news imaginable. In fact it is called the good news or the gospel, and it is simply that Jesus has purchased for us a passage to eternal life, something so outrageous and unbelievable that most people really don't believe it and therefore ignore it.

He's already done that for us. We need only accept his free gift. And if we see the magnitude of that gift, we are moved to do good things. But it is as gratitude for what God has already done in saving us, not as a way of earning our own salvation. Once we receive God's free gift of love in Jesus, we are properly moved to want to love him back and to love our fellow man.

Anyone who perseveres in his sin receives judgement. The church cannot loose the penitent from sin without arresting and binding the impenitent in sin.

And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.

It is astonishing the sense of innocence that goes with sin--only the hard and careful man and the saint are free of it.

All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.

What a brutish master sin is, taking the joy from one's life, stealing money and health, giving promise of tomorrow's pleasures, and finally leading one onto the rotten planking that overlies the mouth of the pit.