"The Cost of Discipleship" - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Notes from Chapter one "Costly Grace"

“Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner.”

What does it mean to justify sin? Don’t I do that all the time? Like me thinking – “It is ok for me to do this or that. I am ok to drink that much or say those things or hangout there.” “It is ok for me to treat them that way or speak that way” Because I am justified. What is justified? Your actions? Your thoughts? I am justified in my sin?  God help me.

I want to be a justified person – one that is done with sin, not just looking to put perfume on the dung in my life. The thought that comes to mind is 007 a license to kill. Brett Harper, Christian, a license to sin – or at least a theology that allows me to equip my lawyers in order to defend myself when conviction comes….

“Instead of following Christ, let the Christian enjoy the consolation of his grace!”

Why not, thanks Jesus. You took one for the team?! Seriously, maybe it should rather be stolen grace rather than cheap. But you are saved only by faith in what Jesus did on the cross right? Nothing else saves you, not your performance, just his. So faith in cheap grace saves right? Did the thief on the cross understand the difference?  Is this more a directive on how we as believers should live as blood bought sons and daughters? Is this keeping ourselves from becoming ineffective and unproductive (2 Peter 1:3-10). Or a warning to those who are approaching the cross for the first time, this is not fire insurance, this is something so great that it breaks into this life now and beckons you to come and be reconciled – come live life, come and worship. This is why Christ has taken hold of you that you might receive the grace that cost him so much and participate in the divine nature and call in this reality. But does true belief in the saving work of Christ on the cross for the removal of a persons SIN mean that are saved? Or do they also have to understand that this is a life long relationship and is awesome and hard and crazy, but good?

When Moses lifted the bronze Serpent up on the staff and everyone who looked on it was saved from their bites – what if one guy after looking at it started playing with the snakes, even letting them bite him, tying them in knots, being flippant; could he still look at the serpent after that? Foolish comparison, but that is who Jesus compares himself to – just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert so the son of man must be lifted up that whoever looks upon him shall be saved.

“That was the secret of the gospel of the Reformation – the justification of the sinner.”

 Interesting comment in that most people were coming out of the old Roman Catholic church and I would presume with the rise of the practice of indulgences and quick fix say 3 of this and 5 of that and you’re cool mentality, people probably always were unsure of their standing before God. If I can cut my time down in purgatory then I will spend x dollars – no wonder cheap grace is cheap. But if Jesus came to justify the sinner once and for all on the cross and now there is no condemnation of those who are in Christ Jesus then, whoa. Things have changed. I will sell all I have to follow that, that is costly grace. Grace that demands a response.

“The Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different from the world, in fact, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer to try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest fore of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that. “

I feel the call of Jesus to swim to the deep end, don’t just be satisfied with the shallows,” I have called you out where it is hard, but hard is a word that I will transform, my yoke is easy my burden light.”

This cheap grace has been no less disastrous to our own spiritual lives. Instead of opening up the way to Christ it has closed it. Instead of calling us to follow Christ, it has hardened us in our disobedience.

For many years it seems I have been a subscriber (in some part) to the notion of cheap grace. I have often wondered why I found myself lifeless in my faith or even worse trying to manufacture some sort of life. Which often would take the form of how the world tries to find life – experiences, substances, and living for ME. When I feel the tug of Christ reminding me in scripture I quickly pull out the cheap grace card and slowly shrink back into my hole of disobedience. Now I hear him say clearly:

I have more for you

I want all of you

Trust me

Risk

Let go

I am with you

This is why I came

They are why I came

Lets go