PROMPTINGS: Expensive Grace

Mk 8:34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it."

In his landmark book, The Cost of Discipleship, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."

Those of us living in North America battle with cheap grace. You might say we battle with the cheapening of everything in our lives, but certainly in our understanding of God's grace. We like to have things the way we like them and our consumer culture has made that possible even to those who live on opposite ends of the economic spectrum. Having the things we want right now has resulted in staggering debt loads for many Americans who one day wake up and realize that the debt has to be paid.

What Bonhoeffer was observing when he wrote his famous statement on grace was how easily Christianity was made to fit the culture of Nazi Germany in the 1930's. He witnessed very intelligent religious people shape and mold Christianity to fit to size what he believed was at its root an atheistic way of life in Nazism. It was easy to be a Christian. There was no cost. No sacrifice. God's grace - it was believed - was plentiful and abundant to all. Conjoined to a misinterpretation of Luther's reformation slogan that one is saved soli fidei - through faith alone - one was led to think that there really wasn't anything one needed to do or be to be distinctively Christian. You could enjoy the grace of God virtually by simply living in a culture that was called "Christian."

Sound familiar?

Hence the title of his book - The Cost of Discipleship. Restated, being a disciple has a cost associated with it. If Christianity were simply a system of ideas, the cost would be measured in terms of how well we lived up to those ideas. But it isn't. Christianity has at its core the message of the crucified Jesus, the son of God who gave his life so that others might experience true life. We become disciples of a person. You can't be a disciple of an idea. It's the person we follow obediently with our lives. It's a person we call "master." It's a person we call "Lord."

When we follow the way of a person, we become more like that person. Our thoughts, speech, and actions - indeed our very being - resemble that of the person to whom we are disciples (followers).

Bonhoeffer writes, "such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life."

I can only speak for myself. But I'm tired of fast food, cheap extravagance, and shallow living. I want true life, lived deeply and determinedly in Jesus. There's a lot to give up in the world's eyes to become a follower of Jesus. That's the costly part. But there's an eternity of life to gain both in quantity and quality. And that's the grace part.