Cheap Grace

“Cheap Grace is the mortal enemy of our church.
Our struggle today is for costly grace.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

(a Cloudless Sulphur butterfly visits the petunias / Julie Cook / 2016)

We, both you and I, have become accustomed to the acquiring of more for less.
We want it all and we want it quick, fast, easy…
And we want it especially…cheap.

Isn’t that how we as consumers have been programmed?
Cheap is good…get something for nothing, that’s the aim…
Coupons,
groupons,
sales,
markdowns,
incentives,
price cuts,
rebates,
cash back…
Any gimmick offered by the marketers to the naive public and we think that it is us who are the savvy ones,
the slick ones with the upper hand…because we got it…cheap.

Yet what is it when we say that Grace is cheap?
That “unmerited favor” freely offered and freely given to us by God…

It means that it is simply the justification of sin but not of the sinner.
“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.
(Bonhoeffer / Discipleship / Volume 4 pp 44)

Our society, our modern day Christian culture, has allowed for the Grace offered by Jesus from the Cross to become quick, easy and sadly cheap.
If you disagree, just look a bit more closely as to what is offered to the faithful by this modern day faith.

The reality is that the way of the Cross is not easy, nor is it quick.
It is hard, painful and arduous…qualities that are not readily embraced.

So to make these difficult aspects more palatable, we have been offered something else.
Something easier to swallow.
Something more fun, quick and painless.
Something less.
Something cheap…

And sadly, we’ve bought into it hook, line and sinker…

So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. 29 For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.
I Corinthians 11:27-29