The Pastor Who Knelt at the Gallows

On April 9, 1945, just two weeks before Allied forces liberated Flossenbürg concentration camp, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was led to the gallows. The camp doctor who witnessed the execution later wrote that in nearly fifty years of medical practice, he had never seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God. Bonhoeffer knelt on the floor of his cell and prayed, then walked calmly to the scaffold. His last recorded words to a fellow prisoner were simple and unhurried: "This is the end — for me, the beginning of life."

The Nazis believed they held the ultimate power — the power to end a life. They had stripped Bonhoeffer of his pulpit, his freedom, his fiancée, everything. Yet standing at the gallows, the thirty-nine-year-old pastor possessed something his executioners could not confiscate: a victory that did not depend on surviving.

This is precisely what Paul was shouting about to the Corinthians. "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" Death had done its worst to the Son of God on a Roman cross, and three days later the grave stood empty. Because Christ walked out of that tomb, Bonhoeffer could walk toward those gallows without trembling. The sting was gone. The Almighty had already swallowed death whole, and no executioner's rope could undo what the risen Lord had already accomplished. Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory.