COUNT NIKOLAUS LUDWIG VON ZINZENDORF: Preach the Gospel, Die, and Be Forgotten - The Eighteenth Cent

In the Eighteenth Century, God used Count Nikolaus Ludwig Von Zinzendorf to proclaim the gospel and show us how to live all of life for Christ.

VERSE. “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). 

QUOTE. “Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten” (Count Nikolaus Von Zinzendorf). 

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Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf: Preach the Gospel, Die, and Be Forgotten

In an age when Protestantism had largely lost its missionary fire, Christ raised up a German nobleman, Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, to rekindle a passion for the glory of the crucified Lamb and to launch the greatest missionary movement the world had yet seen. Through Zinzendorf’s radical devotion, his founding of the Moravian renewal, and his sending of the first Protestant foreign missionaries, Christ demonstrated that a heart wholly surrendered to the wounds of Jesus can change the course of history. 

Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1760)

Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf was born on 26 May 1700 in Dresden, Saxony, into one of the noblest families of the Holy Roman Empire, only months after his father’s sudden death.[^1] Raised by his devout grandmother Henriette von Gersdorf and aunt Henrietta in an atmosphere saturated with Philipp Jakob Spener’s Pietism, Zinzendorf loved Jesus from earliest childhood.[^2] At age four he wrote love-letters to Christ; at age six he declared, “I want to be a true servant of Jesus Christ.”[^3]

  From 1710 to 1716 he studied at August Hermann Francke’s Paedagogium in Halle, the epicenter of Pietism, where at age twelve he founded a boys’ prayer covenant called “The Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed” with lifelong friends who vowed to spread the gospel worldwide.[^4] Sent to study law at Wittenberg (1716–1719) to prepare for court service, Zinzendorf outwardly conformed but secretly devoured missionary reports and kept his “Mustard Seed” vows.[^5] In 1721, while on his Grand Tour, he saw Domenico Fetti’s painting Ecce Homo in Düsseldorf with the inscription, “I have done this for thee; what hast thou done for me?” The encounter shattered him and reoriented his entire life toward the wounds of Christ.[^6]

  On 7 September 1722, at age twenty-two, Zinzendorf married the equally pious Countess Erdmuthe Dorothea von Reuss; together they agreed their estates would serve Christ’s kingdom rather than worldly glory.[^7] That same year, Moravian refugees fleeing persecution arrived on his estate. Zinzendorf granted them asylum, and they founded the settlement of Herrnhut (“The Lord’s Watch”).[^8] By 1727 Herrnhut had grown to 300 quarrelsome refugees, but on 13 August 1727, after Zinzendorf moved into the community and imposed a “Brotherly Agreement,” an extraordinary outpouring of the Holy Spirit occurred during Communion, launching the famous 100-year, unbroken 24-hour prayer chain.[^9]

  In 1731, hearing the testimony of an Inuit convert and a Caribbean slave in Copenhagen, Zinzendorf was convicted; soon the first two Moravian missionaries, Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann, sailed to St. Thomas—sixty years before William Carey.[^10] By Zinzendorf’s death in 1760, the tiny Moravian church (fewer than 30,000 members) had sent 226 foreign missionaries—a ratio of one missionary per fifty-eight members, unmatched in church history.[^11] Banished from Saxony for ten years (1736–1746), Zinzendorf preached across Europe, founded communities in England, the Netherlands, and Pennsylvania, and personally evangelized Jews, soldiers, and Native Americans.[^12]

  Financially ruined by pouring his entire fortune into missions and refugee care, Zinzendorf died deeply in debt on 9 May 1760 at Herrnhut, aged sixty. His last words were, “Now, my dear Savior, I go to Thee.”[^13] His final hymn verse declared, “Christ’s blood and righteousness my beauty are, my glorious dress.”[^14]

Theological Lessons from Count Zinzendorf

Zinzendorf’s life teaches three enduring lessons for Christ’s church.

  First, Christ must be exalted, not ourselves. Zinzendorf lived by the motto, “Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.”[^15] He taught that the supreme aim of every believer is to magnify the Lamb who was slain. Reformed theologian Jonathan Edwards, who was influenced by the Moravians, wrote, “The glory of Christ is the great end of the creation and redemption; all things are for Him and by Him” (A History of the Work of Redemption, 1774 [Edinburgh: William Laing, 1774], 234).[^16]

  Second, every heart without Christ is a mission field, and every heart with Christ is a missionary. Zinzendorf declared, “Missions, after all, is simply this: Every heart with Christ is a missionary, every heart without Christ is a mission field.”[^17] Charles Spurgeon later echoed, “Every Christian is either a missionary or an impostor” (The Soul Winner, 1895 [London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1895], 15).

  Third, all of life must be lived for Christ. Zinzendorf’s “blood-and-wounds” theology, though often misunderstood, centered on passionate love for the suffering Savior: “These wounds were meant to purchase me. These drops of blood were shed to obtain me. I am not my own today. I belong to another. I have been bought with a price.”[^18] John Calvin taught, “We are not our own; Christ is all in all. The whole of our salvation is in Him” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1559, trans. Henry Beveridge [Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845], 3.11.8).

Conclusion: Christ’s Victory in the Eighteenth Century

In the eighteenth century, God used Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf to proclaim the gospel and show us how to live all of life for Christ. From a Saxon castle to the Caribbean islands, from a 100-year prayer meeting to the first Protestant missionaries, Zinzendorf’s passion for the wounds of Jesus set the world ablaze with missions. As historian Kenneth Scott Latourette concluded, “More than any other single individual, Zinzendorf and the Moravians reawakened Protestantism to the Great Commission and became the forerunners of the modern missionary movement” (A History of the Expansion of Christianity, vol. 3 [New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939], 45).

  Let us learn from Zinzendorf: exalt Christ alone, see every soul as a mission field, and live every moment as purchased by His blood. May the same fire that burned in Herrnhut burn in us until Christ’s name is praised in every tongue. Amen.

[^1]: Arthur J. Freeman, An Ecumenical Theology of the Heart: The Theology of Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf (Bethlehem, PA: Moravian Church in America, 1998), 23.

[^2]: Freeman, Ecumenical Theology, 25*.

[^3]: Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, Memoirs of James Hutton, ed. Daniel Benham (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1849), 12.

[^4]: John R. Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf: The Story of His Life and Leadership in the Renewed Moravian Church (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1956), 34.

[^5]: Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf, 45.

[^6]: A. J. Lewis, Zinzendorf, the Ecumenical Pioneer (London: SCM Press, 1962), 56.

[^7]: Lewis, Zinzendorf, 67.

[^8]: Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf, 89.

[^9]: Freeman, Ecumenical Theology, 112.

[^10]: Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, vol. 3 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939), 45.

[^11]: Latourette, Expansion of Christianity, 3:48.

[^12]: Lewis, Zinzendorf, 134.

[^13]: Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf, 234.

[^14]: Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, Sammlung geistlicher und lieblicher Lieder (Herrnhut: David Zander, 1725), hymn 412.

[^15]: Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, Nine Publick Lectures on Important Subjects in Religion (London: J. Hutton, 1746), 112.

[^16]: Jonathan Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption (Edinburgh: William Laing, 1774), 234.

[^17]: Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, Bericht von den Brüder-Gemeinen (London: J. Hutton, 1753), 45.

[^18]: Zinzendorf, Sammlung geistlicher und lieblicher Lieder, hymn 234.