The Gospel of Costly Grace
from Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and
again . . . .
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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.
118
words
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945) was, says Wikipedia, “a German Lutheran pastor,
theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing
Church.” The quotations above come from his 1937 book, The Cost of
Discipleship.
The words
I found especially compelling from Bonhoeffer about the gospel of costly grace are
these. “It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies
the sinner.”
Many
today want a grace that accepts the sinner by excusing sin, as if God doesn’t
care about sin, as if it costs God nothing to forgive, as if there is no expectation
that we repent and seek transformation. Bonhoeffer called this cheap grace. True
grace is costly because it “cost God the life of his Son.”
Bonhoeffer’s
resistance to the Nazi government was borne out of his loyalty to Jesus, and it
cost him dearly. He was executed in the final days of the Nazi regime. He
fulfilled what has become perhaps his most famous quote, “When Christ calls a
man, he bids him come and die.”
I’d
love to hear your thoughts. Please leave them below.
Next
post: January 2, 2024, “Reign of the True King” from Tim Mackie
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1 comment:
I have preached on this part of Bonhoeffer’s work many times but where we often think of it as cheap grace if we do not repent of our sins etc, the truth is that a cheap grace forgives without causing or evoking repentance from the receiver. The Costly Grace of God forgives before we ask and compels us by that magnitude of that grace to repent and change because we have been forgiven of everything we never should. We cannot cheapen God’s Grace, but we can cheapen our appreciation for it. We can cheapen our relationship with others by leading them to believe that God’s Grace is anything short of complete and comprehensive, capable of ridding us of sin and Satan’s call to just do what feels good and to remain as we are because “God loves us just as we are.”
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