Christians, we have maintained, are those who through confrontation with death are given new freedom from the sting of death and so a new freedom for voluntary service to others. Surely if this claim has any truth in it, then it is not our own suffering but the suffering of the world beyond us that must claim our attention.

Indeed, is not the whole purpose of our liberation from excessive personal anxiety the creation within us of a new consciousness of and care for others?

Just here we encounter the transition from theology to ethics. The theology of the cross is intended to give rise not only to an ecclesiology of the cross, but to an ethic, the essence of which is the attentiveness to human and worldly suffering that is made possible in those who have been and are being delivered from self.

from The Cross in Our Context