Discipleship (Works, Vol 4)

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Where will the call to discipleship lead those who follow it? What decisions and painful separations will it entail? We must take this question to him who alone knows the answer. Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow him, knows where the path will lead. But we know that it will be a path full of mercy beyond measure. Discipleship is joy.

CHEAP GRACE IS THE mortal enemy of our church.[1] Our struggle today is for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace as bargain-basement goods, cut-rate forgiveness, cut-rate comfort, cut-rate sacrament; grace as the church’s inexhaustible pantry, from which it is doled out by careless hands without hesitation or limit. It is grace without a price, without costs. It is said that the essence of grace is that the bill for it is paid in advance for all time. Everything can be had for free, courtesy of that paid bill. The price paid is infinitely great and, therefore, the possibilities of taking advantage of and wasting grace are also infinitely great. What would grace be, if it were not cheap

Amen

Abraham had to learn that the promise did not depend on Isaac, but only on God.

This is a crucial thought.

Rather, any baptized person receives an unrestricted privilege to participate in all areas of the communal life of the members of the body of Christ. To allow other baptized Christians to participate in worship but to refuse to have community with them in everyday life, and to abuse them and treat them with contempt, is to become guilty against the body of Christ itself. To acknowledge that other baptized Christians have received the gifts of salvation, and then to deny them the provisions necessary for this earthly life, or to leave them knowingly in affliction and distress, is to make a mockery of the gift of salvation and to behave like a liar. When the Holy Spirit has spoken, but we still continue to listen to the voice of our race,[35] our nature, or our sympathies and antipathies, we are profaning the sacrament. Baptism into the body of Christ changes not only a person’s personal status with regard to salvation, but also their relationships throughout all of life. The slave Onesimus