This month, we will concentrate on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on a non-compromising faith. His most famous work is The Cost of Discipleship, published first in 1937.[1] Bonhoeffer’s chief concern in the book is that “grace…has become so watered down that it no longer resembles the grace of the New Testament, the costly grace of the Gospels.”[2] Bonhoeffer called this a “cheap grace”[3] and it had “been the ruin of more Christians than any other commandment of works.”[4]

Bonhoeffer defined “cheap grace” as:   …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.[5]  

“Costly grace”, on the other hand, is: …is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.[6]  

There was urgency for Bonhoeffer to complete the book because he believed that true discipleship was the only hope for Germany. He wrote that there are formidable “forces” and obstacles which try “to interpose themselves between the word Jesus and the response of obedience…But the call of Jesus made short work of all these barriers, and created obedience. That call was the Word of God himself, and all that it required was single-minded obedience.”[7]  

A key principle for Bonhoeffer in the book was obedience to Jesus: “the book puts forth what Bonhoeffer himself had come to hear in the Sermon on the Mount: Christ’s Word, commanding obedience.”[8] To Bonhoeffer, this obedience to Christ “meant abandoning his own careerism and embracing dedicated servanthood—even to the point of becoming a prophetic critic of his church.”[9]  

From Bonhoeffer’s perspective, the church in Germany was self-serving, had accommodated herself to evil and, “often, an open endorsement of Hitler’s plans for nationalistic expression.”[10]

Bonhoeffer wrote The Cost of Discipleship to confront the unfaithfulness of the church:   In the context of such church infidelity, Bonhoeffer’s book confronts individual Christian and Christian community alike with the crisis point of their faith: they are called to the same obedience that Christ’s first followers heard. This is the “costly grace” of discipleship…The situation in Germany under the spell of Nazism, Bonhoeffer claims, is identical to that faced by the first disciples asked to choose whether or not to follow Christ.[11]  

Now, it is true we do not live in Germany in the 1930’s. Yet, the call to follow Jesus applies to all situations. It is also true that Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been accused of being too extreme and radical in his understanding of discipleship.   But Jesus did make it clear that it is serious business to follow him: For “whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9.24). Thus, there is a “cost” to following Jesus. What some would call “radical”, Jesus would simply call “normal.”