Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross… Costly grace is the gospel. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and grace because it gives a man the only true life… Above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son… When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.

Cheap grace means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as general truth...an intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross. Costly grace is the gospel. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son...it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life. Costly Grace is the incarnation of God... When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. That is why the rich young man was so loath to follow Jesus, for the cost of His following was the death of his will. In fact, every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts.

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.

The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother's is sure.

Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.

The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them.

By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. … Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods.

The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is knocking at the door.