Dietrich Bonhoeffer

What can the call to discipleship, the adherence to the word of Jesus, mean today to the businessman, the soldier, the laborer, or the aristocrat? What did Jesus mean to say to us? What is his will for us today? Drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, Dietrich Bonhoeffer answers these timeless questions by providing a seminal reading of the dichotomy between "cheap grace" and "costly grace."

The Cost of Discipleship

charisa

“To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. ”

FINALLY, i have finished. i wanted to read this as a venture to have a better academic and philosophical understanding of my faith. also, the cost of discipleship IS a weighty one, and i wanted to hear from someone who went to an extreme for the sake of what he perceived as obedience to Christ. but yeesh, bonhoeffer sometimes speaks more through syllogisms than sentences. definitely not entry-level theology. 

still, he challenges the christian in so many different areas: in discipleship, yes, but also in its many avenues through church involvement, prayer, daily life, evangelism, truth, and more. i didn’t agree with everything he put forth, and he has some hot takes on earthly suffering, but ultimately, his views on the inseparability of faith and obedience were very compelling. we obey because we have faith, but we also have faith because we obey. and grace — the grace of God is what keeps that relationship in motion. 

“Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”

Todd Luallen

This book is worth reading for the first section alone, the section in which Bonhoeffer discusses “cheap grace.” The entire section reads like Paul in Romans where he says “should we continue to sin that grace may abound?” Bonhoeffer presents the picture of a Christian life according to the “Reformers” and states clearly his opinion that a life without spiritual works is a simply a life of “unbelief.” This is section of the book is one giant call to action, I don't see how you could come away with any other impression. 

The book was a bit tough to read for me, especially in audio form while commuting to work. With the exception of the first section on cheap grace, the rest of the book is very “heady” and each sentence can be packed full of challenging language. In terms of format, the Bonhoeffer discusses the Sermon on the Mount after talking about cheap grace, and then he discusses the Sacraments, and finally the Church in all it's manifestations. 

In discussing the community of the Church and what it should look like, Bonhoeffer says that we are slaves, and our concern should be for the Kingdom/Gospel, and we should be content in submission to our earthly authorities, just as Jesus was. He says we should not be “bond servants of the world” and suggests that there are two ways this can happen. You can overthrow a government in revolution in an attempt to instill a righteous order, or you can attempt to instill the government with a pseudo-religiousness that is not really righteousness, because those in authority may not have a relationship with Jesus. It's interesting that he states this, because we know that Bonhoeffer is well known for his part in the conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler during WW II, for which he was captured, jailed, and finally executed. I think there are a few opinions in this early book of his that he would later come to change with more maturity and wisdom. And knowing that he later disagreed with some of the things he wrote in this book it makes it a little more difficult to promote comments from this book. Having said that, I do think there are plenty of nuggets of truth in this book that are completely in line with scripture and can therefore easily be supported and encouraged; the portion on “cheap grace” being the foremost of those nuggets.

Dana Kraft

An interesting read although some sections were better than others. I didn't care as much for the section on the Sermon on the Mount, but I did like the discussion of keeping things simply focused on obediently following your calling. That's a lot easier said than done, but it was striking to me to think about how many difficulties in life are really false choices, neither of which is right, good or bring us closer to who we really are.

The Cost of Discipleship

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