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Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner.
Yet it is imperative for the Christian to achieve renunciation, to practise self-effacement, to distinguish his life from the life of the world.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.
The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ. Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, and that the call is inseparable from the grace. But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves.
The word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works.
Happy are they who, knowing that grace, can live in the world without being of it, who, by following Jesus Christ, are so assured of their heavenly
citizenship that they are truly free to live their lives in this world. Happy are they who know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship. Happy are they who have become Christians in this sense of the word. For them the word of grace has proved a fount of mercy.
Discipleship means adherence to Christ, and, because Christ is the object of that adherence, it must take the form of discipleship.
If we would follow Jesus we must take certain definite steps. The first step, which follows the call, cuts the disciple off from his previous existence.
For faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it, and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience.
try and force the Word on the world by hook or by crook is to make the living Word of God into a mere idea, and the world would be perfectly justified in refusing to listen to an idea for which it had no use.
The same weak Word which is content to endure the gainsaying of sinners is also the mighty Word of mercy which can convert the hearts of sinners. Its strength is veiled in weakness; if it came in power that would mean that the day of judgement had arrived. The
