While in college I had to read the book The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which is an amazing book on what the nature of Discipleship is. By the way, if you ever want to get your rear end handed to you just pick up this book and give it a read. I now am reading a book by Jon Walker called Costly Grace, which is a contemporary view on Bonhoeffer’s Christian Classic. Costly Grace vs. Cheap Grace is a concept that Bonhoeffer coined in The Cost of Discipleship. This has me thinking on what type of Grace I have in my life. What type of Grace do you have in yours?
Before we go any further we need to properly define what different types of Grace are. Cheap Grace is defined as an arrogant presumption that we can receive forgiveness for our sins, yet never abandon our lives to Jesus. We assume we can go on living the way we have been because our sins are no forgiven. Costly Grace justifies the sinner: Go and sin no more. Cheap Grace justifies the sin: Everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are.
Even after writing these definitions, it causes me to step back and re-evaluate my life. Truthfully we have all, and I mean all, lived in Cheap Grace at some point or in some area of our lives. What Bonhoeffer and Walker state over and over again is Cheap Grace is grace without relationship or discipleship. While Costly Grace is this, it is grace in the vein of relationship and brought out through the means of discipleship. In other words, it is personal.
Webb states this; “The Incarnation is totally personal. When Jesus calls you it is absolutely personal; and the cost of grace is personal. Jesus paid personally to provide us with free grace and we must pay personally to live within that grace. Why do you think Jesus died for you, if not for the personal? What do you think he expects from you, if not something personal?”
The price that we pay is not for salvation, period. In fact, that is the free gift that God gives us. But what we do pay is our life in service to the one who gave this free gift to us. I love and serve God not because I have to, but because I wouldn’t know life unless He first gave. Therefore Grace is Costly because it cost Jesus His life, and it cost me mine in service to Him. How bout you? Is your life sold out to the one who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light?
On Wednesday Night we will be talking about how we can do nothing to get Grace in our life, because it is and always will be free. But, Grace should produce things in our lives like fruit, works, and service to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Which is why James tells us that he can prove his faith by his works, not that works produce Grace but that Grace produce works. I know this, I love God. I know grace cost Him something, and I know that grace has changed my life.
Blessings,
Pastor Jason
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