Every person has a choice to make when they are inevitably faced with the evil that plagues this fallen world: does one succumb, or does one resist? Does one stand up for what they believe in, or do they fall? This decision is one that is imperative to how we navigate this world: it is the basis upon which all of our following actions are staked on. If we are not willing to fight and die for the sake of our beliefs, can we really say that we believe them?
During World War II (WWII), Germans had to fight with the moral dilemma of the Holocaust. While Germans were faced with propaganda on the streets, in the news, and elsewhere, they were faced with the same question: do we succumb, or do we persist?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a theologian and pastor during WWII who laid everything on the line for Christ’s kingdom and calling. While he watched his mentors, friends, colleagues and fellow Church leaders depart the company of Christ and join the company of the Third Reich, Bonhoeffer did not falter in his convictions but only grew more firm in them. As Christians, we should heed his example and stand firm in our convictions and be prepared to suffer for Christ’s kingdom.
Discipleship in the name of Christ is essential to the Christian and his or her walk with Christ. Christ calls us to the life of discipleship. Within discipleship lies numerous elements, including obedience and sacrifice. Bonhoeffer makes a distinction between costly grace and cheap grace, which refer to the way the Christian responds to Christ’s sacrifice.
He writes that cheap grace is “justification of sin but not of the sinner,” and adds facetiously that, “because grace alone does everything, everything can stay in its own ways …. In all things, the Christian should go along with the world and not venture (like sixteenth-century enthusiasts) to go live a different life under grace from that under sin!” (Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. “The Cost of Discipleship”).
Bonhoeffer quips that “the Christian better not rage against grace or defile that glorious cheap grace by proclaiming anew a servitude to the letter of the Bible in an attempt to live an obedient life under the commandments of Jesus Christ!” (Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. “The Cost of Discipleship,” pg. 43-44).
Costly grace is the natural alternative to cheap grace, as it justifies the sin instead of the sinner. Alternatively, costly grace 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” (pg. 45). In other terms, costly grace requires you to die to yourself in order to have true life in Christ.
What does this look like? It means clinging to Christ when you no longer see the path that he has for you, but following nevertheless. For Corrie Ten Boom, it looked like starting a rehabilitation facility for not only Holocaust survivors but also former Nazis. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it looked like execution by the Third Reich mere weeks before the end of WWII. The path of Christ may not be an easy one, and it may not be a path that we know yet. But to follow it in obedience to Christ is the life of discipleship.
Reading and learning about cheap and costly grace is important because the way that you respond to Christ’s sacrifice is of utmost importance. Yes, the bill is paid in full. Yes, as Johnathan Edwards famously said, we contribute nothing to our salvation other than the sin that makes it necessary. Yes, it is faith that justifies us. But does that mean that works are unimportant?
Does that mean that nothing is required of us, just because the gift of salvation is freely offered? Far from it. It means that much is required of us: to adopt those without parents, to comfort those who mourn, to love those in our lives who are hardest to love.