Cheap Grace

Continuing a bit with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we will look at one of his best known themes or principles - cheap grace/costly grace. From The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer writes the following:

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace....Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. The church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto a part in that grace. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.

Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.

Cheap grace is 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 [and suffering], grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

If this is "cheap grace" what is the anti-thesis? Costly grace. More on that tomorrow.