Was Bonhoeffer right about divine grace being costly?
"Every pupil, when he has completed his training, will be like his teacher" — Luke 6:40 (Today's English Version)
Commentary on Luke 6
I was eavesdropping on a conversation in a church parking lot. The service had been dismissed nearly half an hour before. Everyone had gone except a young architect who was still talking to the pastor.
"Well, Pastor, it sounds easy when you say it," this new Christian was saying, "but it's not so easy living it."
How true. It can be very easy to talk about living by the principles of the Kingdom of God. However, every pagan who has observed Christians closely knows that the way we live is not always exactly what Jesus outlined in His Sermon on the Mount.
In the message recorded in Luke 6 (which Matthew also records), Jesus talks about the ideal Christian life. It should be a life profoundly different in both motivation and lived-outness of the "natural" person's life.
Living by the Sermon on the Mount principles is not something that just happens. It's not always easy to love our enemies, to do good things to those who hate us, to bless those who curse us, to not be condemning of others, and to forgive. Such a high degree of Christ-likeness can only grow out of a clean heart, a sanctifiedheart. And even then, we have to conscientiously discipline ourselves under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
During our home assignment time after our first term of missionary service in Italy, I noticed that discipleship had become a fashionable spiritual word for North American believers. At that point, it seemed like everybody was either taking a course in discipleship or teaching one..
Actually, discipleship is a good way of summing up the lifestyle Jesus calls us to accept in His Sermon on the Mount. The fact that discipleship is now being highly emphasized doesn't mean, of course, that a way has been discovered to streamline the discipling process.
While pastoring in Uvalde, TX, I would occasionally browse through the library of the junior college on the edge of town. One day, I found German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book The Cost of Discipleship. In the opening pages, Bonhoeffer writes against believing in cheap grace. Grace is costly, he argues, and therefore, so is discipleship. What an effect that book had on me!
There is no cheap price tag on true discipleship. No discounts are offered. No shortcuts have been discovered. Discipleship is much more than a course to be mastered and a grade to be earned. It's much more than a list of facts to be memorized; it's more than keeping a daily journal (as helpful as that can be for some people).
Certainly, we must study what it means to be a disciple. The content of the Sermon on the Mount must be mastered if we are to live it. Journals, notebooks, and other tools can help us in developing our personal spiritual discipline.
But being a true disciple is a lifestyle. Learning about what it means to be a disciple doesn't mean we have arrived. It means we can now begin to be one. Living the Sermon on the Mount must be redone fresh every day. There's nothing cheap about that kind of discipleship. It will cost you the rest of your life.
I wrote these devotional thoughts while Barbara and I served as missionaries in Italy. They originally appeared in Standard, a take-home Faith Connections curriculum piece for adult Sunday school classes published by The Foundry.
-- Howard Culbertson,
"The cost of discipleship" is a concept famously associated with German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer because of his book by the same title. Bonhoeffer was a prominent Lutheran pastor, theologian, and anti-Nazi dissident during World War II.
For Bonhoeffer, the "cost of discipleship" refers to the idea that following Jesus and living out His teachings comes with a significant price. It involves more than mere belief or intellectual assent. It demands action, sacrifice, and a complete reorientation of our lives. Bonhoeffer argued that true discipleship involves a radical commitment to Christ, regardless of whether that may mean facing ridicule, persecution, or even death.
In his book, Bonhoeffer contrasts "cheap grace" with "costly grace." Cheap grace, he argues, is the idea that forgiveness and salvation can be obtained without any real transformation or commitment on the part of the believer. It's grace without discipleship, without the acknowledgment of Christ's lordship over one's life. Costly grace, on the other hand, recognizes that discipleship requires a willingness to follow Christ regardless of the personal cost.
Bonhoeffer's concept of the cost of discipleship emphasized the need for our faith to be demonstrated through action. That includes obedience to Christ's teachings even when it seems difficult or makes us uncomfortable or even requires some kind of sacrifice.