The Cost of Discipleship

In the context of our discussion on false signs of genuine Christianity on Sunday night, I quoted from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s, The Cost of Discipleship. Bonhoeffer understood discipleship--and he paid for it with his life. Adolf Hitler ordered him tortured and hanged just weeks before the liberation of Berlin.

Hear Bonhoeffer well:

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, 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.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will all he has. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, and the door at which a man must knock.

Happy are they who, knowing that grace, can live in the world without being of it, who, by following Jesus Christ, are so assured of their heavenly citizenship that they are truly free to live their lives in this world. Happy are they who know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship.