Tis the season…for sales and deals, half-offs and BOGOs. We all like to find a bargain or get something we have been wanting for 25% off. When someone else looks at it, we may brag that it was inexpensive because we were in the right place at the right time. But we bristle if the other person says that it looks ‘cheap’. These two words, ‘inexpensive’ and ‘cheap’ are not the same thing. Catching a break on the price is a statement about the buyer but saying that the product looks ‘cheap’ is a statement about the low quality of the thing purchased.
In his book The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer’s first chapter is titled “Costly Grace.” However, the first paragraph of that chapter is about something else.
“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack’s wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolation of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost!” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, (originally published in German 1937; English edition, Revised 1958, Macmillan, page 45).
Bonhoeffer makes extensive use of sarcasm in this book; and if you are not careful, someone might quote a sentence without noting that the whole paragraph; sometimes the whole page drips with sarcasm.
Something is really bothering Bonhoeffer here. The time is the 1930s, the decade of the rise of fascism and the right wing reshaping of the government of Germany to favor their values. Throughout the decade, the Evangelical Church (Evangelische Kirke, a federation of Lutheran, Reformed, and Protestant churches in Germany) drifted more toward Cheap Grace. Bonhoeffer argued that,
“Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. … (warning, Sarcasm Ahead) Well, then, let the Christian live like the rest of the world, let him model himself on the world’s standards in every sphere of life, and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin.”
Bonhoeffer clearly highlights the two-step program of God’s grace. Step 1: God forgives us of our sins, if we ask for forgiveness. We learned this when we memorized verses as children.
“If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9).
Forgiving our sins is an ongoing feature of God’s grace. Today we confess and are forgiven. Next week, we will have to confess again. That is one aspect of our relationship with God. We can live freely only because we are in relationship with God and know that God, Our Father, will forgive us and restore us.
But some people twisted this relationship and took it as a license to sin. That is, God will always forgive us, so we can live like the world and things will be fine. The Apostle Paul dealt with this heresy.
“What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may increase? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6: 1-4).
This is Bonhoeffer's Step 2. Forgiveness for sins is one thing, dealing with our sinful self is another. It takes God’s grace to forgive, and it takes God’s grace to rebuild our godly self. We need both.
Do you ever wonder about the meanings of hymns, particularly if they were written in the 1700s to the 1900s as most of ours are? For example, you are singing “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” and you begin the second verse singing, “Here I raise mine Ebenezer….” Really? What is that? It refers to a stone that Samuel stood up near Mizpah and named Ebenezer because God had given Israel victory over the Philistines (I Samuel 7: 12).
Now, back to the point, you are singing “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me.” At the end of the first verse, Augustus Toplady wrote in 1776, “...be of sin the double cure; save from wrath and make me pure.” What is the ‘double cure’?
Toplady has this same double-barreled grace in mind. We are forgiven our sins and that saves us from God’s wrath; but in light of Paul’s words above, we are also given a new life that makes us pure. Our old life is dead; don’t try to revive it and fall again into the clutches of our sinful nature. Instead, as Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5: 48).
Of course, we cannot do that unless we are led by the Spirit to follow Jesus closely. For every misstep, which is forgiven by God, we take five more steps in the right direction. That is the life of a disciple, and all of us are disciples if we have committed our lives to Jesus Christ.
Cheap Grace will not lead us there. But what is Costly Grace?