“Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ.”
“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer--
I've been thinking about a lot of things lately. That is not odd in and of itself. I'm usually thinking, delving deeper into things and seeking understanding. To understand - that is at the core of my being. I'm not sure what triggered it, but over the past several weeks I have been reading Bonhoeffer. I had always heard of his work, but had never actually engaged it.
For those who don't know, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who lived during the early part of the 20th century. He came from an aristocratic family and was quite gifted, a skilled pianist and a top intellectual. His father was a leading neurologist in Germany. His mother came from nobility. Bonhoeffer shocked his family, choosing to become a theologian.
When Hitler rose to power in Germany, he spoke out against him publicly. When the Nazis were able to get the Lutheran Church to look the other way, Bonhoeffer called them out. He was able to move his family out of Germany and began teaching in New York.
God had other plans. He was called to return to Germany where he continued to work against the Nazis and preach the Gospel. Bonhoeffer became a double agent with the Abwehr, the German secret police, and used information obtained their to save Jews being targeted by the Nazis. It was Bonhoeffer's firm belief that Christ calls us to live for others, not ourselves.
Deitrich Bonhoeffer could have sat out the war. He could have survived. Instead he went back and preached the Gospel. He went into the darkness to be a light. His fight against Nazism was discovered and, after the Abwehr attempted to killed Hitler, he was sentenced to death.
Three weeks before Hitler killed himself, Bonhoeffer went to the gallows. As he left his companions on that day to face death he said, "This is the end, for me the beginning of life."
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Bonhoeffer's Discipleship is challenging and it begins bluntly. "Cheap Grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace."
What is cheap grace? It is the grace we bestow upon ourselves. It is justification of sin instead of justification of the sinner. It is license for believers to keep living as they have always lived, never being transformed into the one we are meant to be like - Jesus Himself.
"Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community; it is the Lord's Supper without confession of sin; it is absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ."
But what is it we should be seeking? What is this costly grace?
"Costly grace is the hidden treasure in the field, for the sake of which people go and sell with joy everything they have. It is the costly pearl, for whose price the merchant sells all he has; it is Christ's sovereignty, for the sake of which you tear out an eye if it causes you to stumble. It is the call of Jesus Christ which causes a disciple to leave his nets and follow him.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which has to be asked for, the door at which one has to knock.
It is costly, because it calls us to discipleship; it is grace, because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly, because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live. It is costly, because it condemns sin; it is grace, because it justifies the sinner. Above all, grace is costly because it was costly to God, because it costs the life of God's Son--"you were bought with a price"--and because nothing can be cheap to us which is costly to God. Above all, it is grace because the life of God's Son was not too costly for God to give in order to make us live. God did, indeed, give him up for us. Costly grace is the incarnation of God.
Costly grace is grace as God's holy treasure which must be protected from the world and which must not be thrown to the dogs. Thus, it is grace as living word, word of God, which God speaks as God pleases. It comes to us as a gracious call to follow Jesus; it comes as a forgiving word to the fearful spirit and the broken heart. Grace is costly, because it forces people under the yoke of following Jesus Christ; it is grace when Jesus says, "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
How easy it is to forget how much grace does cost. We use it as an excuse to refuse to grow, to stagnate, and to keep drinking milk when we need to eat meat.
And we certainly tend to forget about Jesus' yoke. How often does church become work? How often does it become a list of pious activities we perform to somehow prove our worthiness? We go to service, go to small group, go to accountability, work at the church, serve at the church, but we still feel empty. These things are not inherently bad, but they are worthless when we do not surrender ourselves to Jesus and be obedient to Him.
Too often the church - and we as believers - think that obedience and obligation are the same thing. They are not. Obligation breeds guilt and fear. It creates unhealthy attachment and imprisons the obliged. Obedience is about freedom in Christ. It is about hearing His call and responding to it without question. Why do we need to think if Jesus, the Word of God, is in charge?
That's not what the world wants us to do. And the church has been infected by the world. So many programs that churches put on today encourage believers to "be themselves" - yet this is an un-Biblical concept. We are told to surrender ourselves and conform to Christ because He is like what we are supposed to be like. Caution is often encouraged nowadays, but Jesus never preached a cautious faith.
Jesus called and Levi followed. Jesus called and Peter left his boat. A striking thing about so much of the discipleship training I've been engaged in over the years is how little the training actually looks at the disciples to see how we should be disciples. Bonhoeffer was the first that I have read to use The Beatitudes as the foundation for discipleship. I can understand why many discipleship training courses steer away from that - you'll find far fewer takers.
That's why cheap grace is so appealing. It's easy. You don't really have to give up anything. But there's no depth. Instead of a committed walk, we get to leave the road Jesus is on whenever we feel like it. Instead of real community, we get to all wear the same t-shirts and call it community. We get pithy messages from our preacher, but those that have been called will so often feel empty. They will not be filled because so many churches are not about walking with Jesus. They are about being good people and having a nice group to hang out with. Or, more insidiously, they can be about misguided pastors who are just looking to have a group of followers to inflate their egos. This is where the cult of personality becomes a problem. How many people would still be at the church if the pastor left?
Christianity is so often boiled down to a series of events nowadays instead of a serious walk. It is conferences, groups, meetings, gatherings, dinners, etc. As I said above, these things are not bad in and of themselves, but they become empty when the church becomes the center instead of Jesus.
I'll admit, when I hear people declare how much they love their church, I can cringe a bit. Not always when it's deeper than that (such as, I love my church because it truly preaches God's Word and encourages real discipleship and a real walk with Jesus), but so often I've heard people declare that they love their church and no mention of Jesus comes out.
Event Christianity is a social club. It is a replacement for the gatherings that we found so alluring in school. It is a church that only feeds milk. It is a church that doesn't encourage confession of sin and repentance. It is a church that doesn't realize that grace has a high price. It is a church that doesn't encourage us to surrender ourselves to Jesus.
You see, Jesus' way doesn't make sense to the world - and doesn't make sense to a lot of churches.
To be victorious, you must surrender. How crazy does that sound? Yet it is the truth. But we avoid it. We hold onto our fear. We hold onto our pain. We hold onto our bitterness. We hold onto all the things that bring us down and prevent us from fully embracing Jesus' joy. They also prevent us from having Jesus' heart - a true compassion for others.
A startling point Bonhoeffer makes is that when we surrender to Jesus, He not only becomes mediator in our relationship with God, but also in all of our other relationships. Our friendships go through Jesus. Our work goes through Jesus. And our marriages are with three people, not just two, because Jesus is supposed to be the mediator between man and wife. In this way we attain Jesus' heart through His grace, but only through surrender.
My own surrender is not complete and I know it will not be in this lifetime, but I pray for God to reveal to me those aspects in my life that prevent me from following Him truly. I don't want the "feel goods" at my church or in my life - I want the truth.
And that is where it all begins. Truth and honesty. Jesus calls us individually before He calls us into community. But we must first know who we are and that means we must first be honest with ourselves. If we are not honest with ourselves then how can honesty permeate all of our other relationships? We acknowledge who we are. We see what drags us down - maybe it's trying to win affection, to please others. Maybe it's the fear in our hearts which prevents us from taking steps forward in faith. But in honesty we can surrender those things and God can work in us to create victory.
Confession, repentance, and surrender are hallmarks of authentic Christian community. They lead to true service (true service does not come out of obligation, but out of compassion through Christ's own heart), true fellowship, and a joy that the world could never know. It is this type of community that transformed the world during and after the time of the Apostles. We prefer the Event Christianity over the Transformative Christianity nowadays. We like to wear the same t-shirts and chat over lunch. We don't want to surrender, we just want to be good people.
When Jesus calls, He wants us to get out of the boat and leave our nets behind. He wants us to walk without fear and to love one another - but we only find real love in Him.
Let us stand for real community and a real walk with Jesus, not a walk where we dictate the terms. Let us begin with confessing our sins before God, repenting of them, and following Him - even if it makes us or others around us uncomfortable. Let us listen for His voice and stop listening to the ones in our heads that distract us.
