Cheap Grace vs. Costly Grace - Part 1

“When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Cost of Discipleship, first published in 1937, is a seminal work by German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer that explores what it truly means to follow Christ, particularly through the lens of the Sermon on the Mount. Written during the rise of the Nazi regime, the book reflects Bonhoeffer’s concern that the German Church had become too aligned with the state and had lost its moral and spiritual mission.

Today, we will include some excerpts about what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace” and tomorrow, we will follow up with excerpts about “costly grace”.

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. Today, we are fighting for costly grace.

Cheap grace is grace offered at a bargain – careless forgiveness, shallow comfort, empty sacraments. It is grace treated as the Church's inexhaustible resource, handed out freely without any questions or conditions. It is grace without a price, without sacrifice! It assumes that because the price was paid long ago, everything is now free. Since the original price for grace was infinite, it must now be an infinitely exploitable resource.

After all, what would grace even mean if it weren't cheap for us?

This cheap version reduces grace to nothing more than a doctrine, a principle, a system. It presents the forgiveness of sins as a general truth and the love of God as merely a Christian idea. Simply agreeing with this idea intellectually becomes enough to guarantee forgiveness, leading to the assumption that any church with the right doctrine automatically shares in this grace. In such a church, the world finds an easy cover for its sins – there is no need for real sorrow or a genuine desire to be freed from sin.

Cheap grace, in the end, is a denial of the living Word of God—the Incarnation of God's Word.

Cheap grace means the forgiveness of sin without the transformation of the sinner. It is the idea that grace does everything, so nothing in life needs to change. "Our actions don't matter," it whispers, and the world carries on as usual. Ultimately, this is what cheap grace means: grace that justifies sin without justifying the sinner. It does not lead to true repentance or a life that turns away from sin, because it is not the kind of forgiveness that frees us from sin's power.

Cheap grace is the grace we give ourselves. Cheap grace is forgiveness without repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, and absolution without accountability. It is grace without discipleship, without the cross, without the living presence of Jesus Christ.

“What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? Certainly not!” Romans 6:15 (BSB)

• Rev. Dale M. Glading, President