Cheap Grace

 I wish I could get others to see what butterflies wander through my mind.  I am still profoundly affected by the movie I saw on Sunday.  I went for a long drive through Bear Lake to hear Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Cost Of Discipleship."

to give you a sample 

""Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on 

ourselves . . . the preaching of forgiveness 

without requiring repentance, baptism with¬ 

out church discipline, communion without 

confession. Cheap grace is grace without dis- 

cipleship. . . . 

"Costly grace is the gospel which must be 

sought, again and again, the gift which must 

be asked for, the door at which a man must 

knock. . . . 

"It is costly because it costs a man his life, 

and it is grace because it gives a man the only 

true life."— The Cost of Discipleship* 

He starts his argument with Monasticism. Being not of the Catholic or Lutheran faith tradition, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the concept of Monasticism. However, I have sometimes expressed the desire to be a monk, to be left to my books, and to have someone occasionally slide food under my door.   Then I remembered that Luther was a monk God forced out of the abbey and that Bonhoeffer was of the Lutheran faith.

My wife has sometimes forced me out of my cloistered habits. When I was first married, I spent far too much time in the basement with my computer. She soon forbade me to have a computer in the house for at least a decade. So, I understand the drive toward seclusion and self-contemplation. 

After spending four decades seeking to attract my family and friends to Christ, I understand expensive grace.  

I know that Bonhoeffer was a committed pacifist who left his theological cloister.  He ended his life in a nazi concentration camp, being hung for the crime of attempting to rescue the German church from the nazi regime. He also participated in an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. 

How do I pay the price for costly grace and lead others to desire costly grace?