"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." For Bonhoeffer, this phrase sums up what one pays when he/she decides to answer the call of Christ.

It isn't the lukewarm affection displayed by many churchgoers. Bonhoeffer wrote this book before World War II when Europe and North America were considered "Christian." The lack of a Christianity, however, that cost, may be one reason Nazism was able to grow in a country that had known Christian theologians and intellectuals. The country had become, Bonhoeffer believed, "Christian," "but at the cost of secularizing the Christian religion as never before."

When one follows Christ, nothing else has significance.

Christians were to bring Christ to the world, but "every attempt to impose the gospel by force, to run after people and proselytize them . . . is both futile and dangerous." Better, he says, to intercede, to pray for those who resist the gospel.

Sometimes when the gospel is not accepted, a disciple may leave. At other times, they stay. Bonhoeffer, of course, was led to stay in Nazi Germany and paid the price.