Metaphor
Still in Luke 14, the crowds are large and Jesus turns unsentimental. Who builds a tower without sitting down to count? Who goes to…
Calling · The Cross · Discipleship
Luke 14
Quote
Cheap grace
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (1937)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer named the disease of a comfortable church: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” He wrote it in 1937, as the German church was making its peace with the Reich. Costly grace, he said, is the call that actually follows Jesus — and it is the only grace that is grace at all.
How you’d preach it
Do not use this to scold tired people. Use it to recover the gift: grace that costs Jesus everything will also rearrange us. Pair with a specific cheapening in the text — forgiveness without truth, worship without obedience.
- Grace
- Discipleship
- The Cross
Bonhoeffer · Luke 9 · Romans 6
Luke 9:23; Romans 6:1–4