Thursday, March 4, 2010

Confronted by Costly Grace

I am preparing for the second sermon in a Lenten series on the Christian's stewardship of God's gifts. Thinking of this drew me back to a powerful book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. First published in German in 1937 under the title Nachfolge (discipleship), it is known to English readers as The Cost of Discipleship. Bonhoeffer, for those who might not know, was a Lutheran pastor who was killed in a concentration camp for his role in an attempted assassination on Adolph Hitler.

Whatever one may think of a pastor being involved in an assassination plot, Bonhoeffer was a serious Christian at a serious time for Christians. He took up Christ's call to discipleship and his Nachfolge, and his life, is testament of this. The Cost of Discipleship includes some of the most powerful expositions of vocation and Christian discipleship I have read, or will ever read. Here is just one:

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day 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 well all his goods. 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 of 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 a 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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (Macmillan, 1963: 45, 47-48) 

To read this is to see the truth. It lays bare the souls of those who call themselves Christians. This Lent, it calls us to repentance and, thus, to reconciliation.

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