Bonhoeffer on "cheap" vs. "costly" grace...

Lent is an opportunity to realize again the price of our redemption, the Word made Flesh, who not only shares, but fulfills our human destiny.  One of the great challenges to contemporary Christianity--especially among the observant--is the 'domestication' of this awesome mystery... becoming too familiar with the stories, too routine in religious practice, too methodical in our pursuit of holiness.  Lent gives us the opportunity to look deeply into the mystery of the cross and to see our Incarnate Lord anew, and to find ourselves drawn more deeply and personally into that Paschal Mystery.  What we witness at Easter is not simply the retelling of a story that stays external to us... a divine intervention hearkening to a long-forgotten history and doctrine imputing a kind of moral justification upon us... Easter and our participation the cross and resurrection of our Lord is a profoundly incarnational event that calls forth everything we are into personal abandonment unto the will of God.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian of the early 20th century who was martyred by the Nazis near the end of the war, wrote about the cost of discipleship and the regrettable tendency we have in placing hope in the worldly... the external formulas of faith... the unwitting hope we take in idols.  When we renounce the world and worldly pursuits, taking up instead the real path of radical discipleship, find ourselves on the Way of the Cross unto divine transformation.  Tough, costly grace is not something to be feared, but embraced, as it is the gift that truly satisfies the human heart and brings life and vitality to our churches and religious observance.

 

From Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship: 

Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system.  It means forgiveness of sins as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God.  An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be itself sufficient to secure the remission of sins.  The Church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto, a part in that grace.  In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin.  Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.  Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner.

 

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Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.  Cheap grace is a grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. 

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Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.  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 man the only true life.  It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.  Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.  Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.  Costly grace is the incarnation of God.