THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP by Dietrich Bonhoffer - Cheap Grace

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, are from THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP, 1959 ed.

The thoughts and comments stated here are my own based on my reading and understanding of Bonhoffer’s book.

“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.”

“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance… Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

When I decided to read Bonhoffer’s work I was well aware of the situation in Germany in 1939 and the struggles he was undergoing, at least from an academic standpoint. But the current state of affairs in the church then forms similar parallels with the state of the Christian church in the world today, especially in western civilization. As a leader during the prewar years in the Confessional Church, Bonhoffer found himself at odds with the Third Riech. He and others refused, unlike some other German churches, to yield. Following his arrest and imprisonment in 1943 he was given opportunity to recant. Instead, he openly admitted that as a Christian, he was an enemy of National Socialism and it was his Christian duty to oppose a tyrannical government no longer based on the law of God. He was concerned the shift by the Confessional Church was due to the leadership being “more concerned with her own existence and inherited rights than with preaching against the war and with the fate of the persecuted and oppressed.”  

A similar situation existed in the first century between the Roman Empire, the institutional Jewish religion and the early church. During my life experience, I see similar patterns repeating in the 20^th and 21^st century protestant church. Far too many are focused on social stability and physical expansion rather than reaching the unsaved and directing them to Godly worship and spiritual growth. Far too many in Christian churches are using the wrong measuring stick to identify God’s working in their congregations.

For far too many congregants Sunday monring church services are a time to meet with friends, be entertained, sing along, hear words of encouragement, with an occasional twinge of guilt thrown in, and then leave with a happy attitude in hopes that we can get in line at our favorite restaurant before other churches dismiss. Worship services and church life are all too frequently built around the “cheap grace” Bonhoffer decries.

God’s grace is costly. It calls us to commit our complete lives to following Jesus Christ. Costly grace results in losing our entire lives in pursuit of God. The same God who paid the cost of his own Son in order that we might receive his grace. Ephesians 2:1-9 expresses the situation magnificently. We need to pursue the result of God’s grace with the same fervor as the men Christ described in Matthew 13:44-46, one who gives up everything to receive the great treasure he has found. God’s grace will cost us everything and in exchange, he gives us eternal salvation and freedom.

Romans 6:1-14 states that since the only thing we have in this life is our sin. Sin condemns us to eternal death (Romans 3:23). We must die, pay the cost by giving up everything in this deeply flawed life we now live in order to become recipients of God’s grace. The cost to us is total submission and obedience in order fully experience the costly grace of God. We actually don't do anything to earn God's grace, he has done it all. We are called to yield and obey.