Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Final Morning

On April 9, 1945, in the gray dawn at Flossenbürg concentration camp, Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer knelt in prayer before being led to the gallows. The camp doctor who witnessed the execution later wrote that he had never seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God. Bonhoeffer paused at the foot of the scaffold, prayed briefly, then climbed the steps. His last recorded words to a fellow prisoner were stunning in their calm confidence: "This is the end — for me, the beginning of life."

Just weeks later, Allied forces liberated the camp. Hitler's regime, which had wielded death as its ultimate weapon of control, crumbled into rubble. The Reich that was supposed to last a thousand years barely managed twelve. Death, which the Nazis brandished like an unbeatable sword, proved to be a hollow threat against a man anchored in the resurrection of Christ.

Bonhoeffer could taunt death because he knew what Paul knew — that the grave is not a wall but a doorway. Sin gives death its sting, and the law gives sin its power, but God in Christ has disarmed them both. When Bonhoeffer walked toward that scaffold, he walked as a victor, not a victim. The executioner thought he was ending a life. Bonhoeffer knew he was entering one. "Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."