Cheap Grace--Bonhoeffer

The Cost of Discipleship
by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace... Cheap grace therefore amounts to  denial of the living Word of God, in fact a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God."

"That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs... Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.  Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."


"Costly grace is the Incarnation of God... Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says:  'My yoke is easy and my burden is light.'"

"The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ.  Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, and that the call is inseparable from the grace.  But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves."

"This cheap grace has been no less disastrous to our own spiritual lives.  Instead of opening up the way to Christ it has closed it.  Instead of calling us to follow Christ, it has hardened us in our disobedience... The word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works."