Follow Me

Then what? While nobody ever quite articulated it thus, there was a time in American evangelicalism when the entire gospel message seemed to be reduced to “Say the magic prayer and receive your Get Out of Hell Free card.”

Enter Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A German Lutheran pastor in the early 20^th century, he is best known for being hung after participating in a plot to kill Hitler. His book, The Cost of Discipleship became one of the staples in Popular Books of 20^th Century Christianity.

The most famous part of the book is Bonhoeffer’s discussion of the bankruptcy of “Cheap Grace.” The phrase is indeed arresting. Grace, by definition, is free. If I show you grace, I can’t send you a bill afterwards and still call my action “grace.” As the Apostle Paul notes, Christ’s death has the same property: “But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many” (Romans 5:1, ESV).

So, if grace is free, what is cheap grace? This is not an idle question for Bonhoeffer. He begins the book: “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.” Cheap grace is very much epitomized by the “All you need to do is accept Jesus into your heart” message.

It is what follows that opening statement, though, that is a bit surprising. After that opening, if you are expecting a bracing book full of fire and a fighting spirit you will be shocked as you settle in for that wild ride that never quite materializes. Instead, Bonhoeffer launches into a lengthy series of meditations on the Sermon on the Mount. What is most surprising about it is how thoroughly conventional it is. If you have been around church for a while, it is hard to escape the feeling as you read that you have heard this all before. Many, many times. After all, the Sermon on the Mount is one of the Greatest Hits in the Bible, endlessly played on the Sermon Top 40.

The fact that the book seems so pedestrian, however, is another product of Cheap Grace. As Bonhoeffer thinks of it, cheap grace is not solely confined to people who assert that all that matters is a brief moment of decision and a quick prayer. Most Christians follow that up with feeling the need to follow what we can think of as the Handbook of Christian Life. Once you become a Christian, you get a set of rules or practices you should follow. “Don’t drink or chew, or go with girls that do.” Go to church. Read your Bible. Stay away from sinful places. Be good. Be nice. You know the list.

If you think of the Christian Life as a series of things you are supposed to do or to avoid, you are living under Cheap Grace. The problem with that way of thinking is that it treats the Christian Life as an external checklist. Do these things. If you don’t do them, however, don’t worry, you are still loved by God. The result is often that we look at the list of things we should and should not do, think to ourselves, we are doing pretty well when we can check off most of the items, feel bad about not being quite perfect in a few others, and then, of course, there are all those we aren’t really trying to meet. Maybe later. As Augustine put it, “Lord, make me chaste. But not yet.”

Bonhoeffer says repeatedly that thinking about the Christian walk like this is all wrong, totally and completely wrong. It treats grace like it is this thing you got and then there are no real implications other than maybe begin thinking you should do a few more things on the Christian checklist if you have a spare moment.

Costly grace is realizing that grace is not just that thing that happened once upon a time.

When we are called to follow Christ, we are summoned to an exclusive attachment to his person. The grace of his call bursts all the bonds of legalism….Discipleship means adherence to Christ, and, because Christ is the object of adherence, it must take the form of discipleship.

Jesus said to people over and over, “Follow me.” He could have said, but didn’t, “Acknowledge me and then follow this list of activities.” The difference between those two commands is really large. It is the difference between costly grace and cheap grace. What does following Jesus mean?  What does discipleship mean?

It means an exclusive adherence to him, and that implies first, that the disciple looks only to his Lord and follows him. If he looked only at the extraordinary quality of the Christian life, he would no longer be following Christ. For the disciple this extraordinary quality consists solely in the will of the Lord, and when he seeks to do that will he knows that there is no other alternative, and that what he does is the only natural thing to do.

The cost in costly grace is the abandonment of your independent will. You follow Jesus not in the sense of putting bumper sticker on your car saying you do so, but in the sense that you actually follow Jesus. You do what He would do in the way He would do it. Take an example from the Sermon on the Mount:

“Be not anxious for the morrow.” This is not to be taken as a philosophy of life or a moral law; it is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and only so can it be understood. Only those who follow him and know him can receive this word as a promise of the love of his Father and as a deliverance from the thralldom of material things.

Do Not Be Anxious is not a command we should follow. It is not an item on a checklist of Christian Life. It is not something we work to be better at. Do not be anxious is rather a description of what life is like for someone who follows Jesus. If you are following Jesus, you won’t be anxious. What possible reason is there to be anxious if you are following Christ Himself? If you feel anxiety, then you are not following Christ. Period. Full stop. The solution is not to try to be less anxious. The solution is: remember whom you are following and then follow Him.

So, yes, The Cost of Discipleship seems at one level like a bunch of things you have heard a zillion times. But the message underneath it is something with which we all struggle. Following Christ is hard. Following Christ is costly. But, by the grace of God, the free grace of God, following Christ is possible. Grace is both free and costly. When that no longer seems like a contradiction in terms, then you have learned what Bonhoeffer is trying to teach us.

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