Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.
Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is hold to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sin.
Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.
Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. It remains an abstract idea, a myth which has a place for the Fatherhood of God, but omits Christ as the living Son.
Excerpts from "The Cost of Discipleship" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer; 1st Touchstone edition (September 1, 1995).
February 4, 2006, is the death by the Nazis, whose writings and life made him a modern martyr. 100th anniversary of the birth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian put to Christianity, Bonhoeffer came to believe, meant not just professing faith but really putting into practice Jesus' teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. In a widely influential book, THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP, Bonhoeffer had condemned what he called cheap grace -- accepting God's love without cost. At the same time, he extolled costly grace -- grace that requires radical obedience, even the willingness to die for one's beliefs, which Bonhoeffer did.
In the early 1930s, when Adolph Hitler and the Nazis were just coming to power, Bonhoeffer spoke out rejecting as idolatry the Nazi claim that the Fuehrer and the state deserved allegiance above that owed to God. By the late 1930s, he joined a conspiracy to oppose Hitler. It seemed a lesser evil than doing nothing. Less than a month before the war in Europe ended, the Nazis hanged him on April 9, 1945. He was 39 years old.
For millions of Christians, Bonhoffer became an inspiring symbol of what it can mean, in times of crisis and every day, to practice what you preach.
Adopted from PBS Report on Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Also read Bonhoeffer's Costly Theology at Christian History.