Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.
Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack’s wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices…
Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner…
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…
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 kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift that must be asked for, the door at which one must knock.
These are words that could have been written today. But they weren’t. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote them in the 1930′s – when he was in his late twenties. This is a timeless truth that we should contemplate maybe more now in our commercialized, diagrammed culture.
*How do you see the message of grace presented in our world today?
Comments
16 responses to “Is Grace Cheap?”
I have love/hate relationship with Bonhoeffer’s take on grace. While I understand his continued plea for response (ie discipleship, and yes I completely agree for it’s need and role), I push back with the scandalous grace that God…
while we were yet sinners,
while we nailed him to the cross,
while we are in the midst of our deepest and darkest hours – both individually and corporately – continually reaches down, over and over and over and over again… proclaiming ‘Mine!’
That is what discipleship/response is… the natural outpouring of such a love, such a grace.
I agree with you. Although I think he was more nuanced than he is portrayed most of the time.
I think you are exactly right…and that cost…is what makes grace not cheap. Things that are not worthwhile are cheap (I am thinking of a stupid coat I bought for $20 that has now turned into a piece of junk two months later)…not that things have to be financially costly for them to be worthwhile, but things with value are never cheap…
I’ve been thinking lately that cheap grace, and counsel that encourages cheap forgiveness, weakens relationships in church communities. It might make them last, but it makes them brittle, and more likely to eventually fail.
Thanks for sharing this.
Lovely thoughts…good to ponder. Thanks, Derek!
Great quote from Bonhoeffer. Grace is a theme that comes up often in my prayer and hence in my writing. I see God constantly flooding the world with gratuitous, reckless grace, and by our behaviors and attitudes we choose whether or not to participate in that gift.
We choose…so true.
I think Miroslov Volf’s Free of Charge is a good companion to this. It is talking about the difficulty of forgiveness. And the relationship between how God gives to us and then how he forgives us and how we then give to others and forgive others.
Volf clearly says that our giving and forgiveness our a response to God, not out of obligation, but out of appreciation. If anything I think Volf focuses on the difficulty almost too much (although he is using some pretty big deal examples – genocide, accidental death of a child, rape, etc.).
I think the biggest problem with Evangelical use of Bonhoffer’s ideas of Grace are that we aren’t also adopting Bonhoeffer’s companion ideas about the church and community. I am not sure we can have one without the other.
Well stated.
I’ve had a crash course on this in a recent class at seminary where we did a survey on 20th Century theologians. Time and again, I was painfully reminded that when I thought I understood what these theologians were attempting to unpack, I was miss-reading them.
Until I read the full works and understood the context and how they were defining common words like love, grace, etc. as opposed to how we are understanding them here and now, it was an uphill battle.
And DB is so…intensely simple yet meaty and heady all at once. So wonderful but difficult to digest – and allow to enter into, well, at least the way *my* brain is wired. Maybe it’s easier for others. I enjoy the challenge.
I am reading his book on community now and it is kicking my face.
Which one Exclusion and Embrace? It is on my list but I haven’t gotten to it yet (keep waiting for it to go down in price.)
Life Together. It’s a tiny one. And was $7.77 on Amazon. :)
Ah, mis-understood. Life together is incredible.
The paradox here is that grace is free – but not cheap. At the end of the day, it seems to all boil down to the grace of God, and the fact that we cannot earn or negotiate his grace – but it is given freely to those who ask. Yet, it comes at a cost. It does my head in some days…
Grace saved my life. I was drowning under legalism and learning Grace freed me to enjoy life.