Living in Grace

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. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship

I usually like to base my challenges on what I read in Scripture alone, but this quote has been mulling around in my head since yesterday. As I read Bonhoeffer’s distinction between cheap grace and costly grace, I realized just how much I fall into the habit of embracing cheap grace. Later in the discussion, Bonhoeffer offers his ideas about exactly what ways grace is both costly and free, but never cheap.

I am challenged to adjust my way of thinking. I am challenged to live out the amazing reality of costly grace. The cost to me is my life, wholly and completely. I hold so much back from God, but the more I hold the more I truly lose to death. When I live in His grace, I give my life, but I receive real and eternal life in return. That is how I want to learn to live. That is how I must learn to live. I must live a life in full obedience and abandonment to the costly grace of God. Only then will I truly live life.