If you don’t know who Dietrich Bonhoeffer was, you probably should. For those of you who do know, then you know based on the author, this is a really good book!
The Bible tells us throughout, but more specifically in Ephesians 2:8-9, salvation is a gift from God.
“For by Grace you have been saved, through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” – (ESV)
But just because the gift of God is given freely, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost us something to accept it. Some may say then it sounds like gift isn’t free at all, but they would be wrong!
Think of a house. Someone can give you the house for free, but it will cost you if you want to maintain it. Salvation is, in a way, similar. It is a gift of God through Jesus Christ, but once you receive it, you must, as Philippians 2:12 tells us, “…work out your salvation…”
Now, I’m not getting into whether you can lose your salvation or not which is a different discussion. What I am saying is, if we don’t work out our salvation, we will never accomplish all that God has planned for us, and we also run the risk of falling back into perpetual sin. But more than that, Bonhoeffer attempts to prove that discipleship is what leads us to freedom through Jesus Christ.
“When the Bible speaks of following Jesus, it is proclaiming a discipleship which will liberate mankind from all man-made dogmas, from every burden and oppression, from every anxiety and torture which afflicts the conscience. If they follow Jesus, men escape from the hard yoke of their own laws, and submit to the kindly yoke of Jesus Christ.” – Introduction page 36
Freedom and cost do not seem synonymous, but as we have come to find throughout all of Jesus’s teachings, our wisdom is not His wisdom.
The Cost of Discipleship is broken down into four sections: Part I: Grace and Discipleship, Part II: The Sermon on the Mount, Part III: The Messengers, and Part IV: The Church of Jesus Christ and the Life of Discipleship.
Chapter One is worth the price of the book alone, because, if you don’t understand the cost of grace, then you will never understand the cost of discipleship.
“Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite.” – Chapter 1, page 43
“Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God. Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. “ – Chapter 1, page 43
“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” – Chapter 1 page 44
Chapter 2 is titled The Call to Discipleship and the difference and unity between faith and obedience.
“First faith, then obedience. If by that we mean that it is faith which justifies, and not the act of obedience, all well and good, for that is the essential and unexceptionable presupposition of all that follows.” – page 63
“For faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it, and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience.” – page 63
Chapter 3: Single-Minded Obedience, continues on the need and importance of obedience.
Chapter 4: Discipleship and the Cross – discusses that one the costs associated with discipleship is suffering.
“Jesus must therefore make it clear beyond all doubt that the “must” of suffering applies to his disciples no less than to himself. Just as Christ is Christ only in virtue of his suffering and rejection, so the disciple is a disciple only in so far as he shares his Lord’s suffering and rejection and crucifixion.” – page 87
Part II: The Sermon on the Mount starts with Chapter 6: The Beatitudes. When we think of the Sermon on the Mount, we think of teachings from Jesus, so it makes sense that teachings are a part of discipleship. The Beatitudes, also known as the “Blessings” start things off because the disciples need to know they will be blessed.
“Disciples and people, they belong together. The disciples will be his messengers and here and there they will find men to hear and believe their message. Yet there will be enmity between them right to the bitter end. All the wrath of God’s people against him and his Word will fall on his disciples; his rejection will be theirs.” – page 105
It’s good for us to know that even though there is a cost to discipleship, the blessings are greater!
Chapter 8: The Righteousness of Christ marries discipleship and the law to each other.
“It was the error of Israel to put the law in God’s place, to make the law their God and their God a law. The disciples were confronted with the opposite danger of denying the law its divinity altogether and divorcing God from his law. Both errors lead to the same result.” – page 121.
“Confronted with these twin errors, Jesus vindicates the divine authority of the law. God is its giver and its Lord, and only in personal communion with God is the law fulfilled. There is no fulfillment of the law apart from communion with God, and no communion with God apart from fulfillment of the law. To forget the first condition was the mistake of the Jews, and to forget the second the temptation of the disciples.” – page 121.
“… Jesus Christ and he alone fulfils the law, because he alone lives in perfect communion with God. It is Jesus himself who comes between the disciples and the law, not the law which comes between Jesus and the disciples. They find their way to the law through the cross of Christ.” – Page 123
The chapter concludes by tying up the righteousness of the disciples, the beatitudes and the cross. You will have to read it yourself, no spoiler quotes here. 😉
The rest of Part II continues with chapters 9-13 going into the Jesus’ teaching on our brothers, women, truthfulness, revenge, and the enemy; acts and behaviors to which all disciples are to aspire.
Chapters 15-19 are where the disciple will be challenged the most. They pertain a lot to being in the world, but not of the world. What parts of our walk are visible or not visible to others, and more importantly, why? Topics include Righteousness, Prayer, The Devout Life, Simplicity, Unbelievers, and The Great Divide.
Part III is all about The Messengers, those who are called to go out and make disciples after becoming a disciple themselves. Chapter titles include: The Harvest, The Apostles, The Work, The Suffering of the Messengers, The Decision, and The Fruit.
“Thus the disciples are bidden lastly to think, not about their own way, their own sufferings and their own reward, but of the goal of their labours, which is the salvation of the Church.” – Chapter 26 page 220.
Lastly, Part IV is all about the Church and the Disciple. The material in Chapter 29: The Body of Christ and Chapter 30: The Visible Community, is something all Christians should understand if they claim to be a Christian.
“It is no accident that to follow him meant cleaving to him bodily. That was the natural consequence of the Incarnation. Had he been merely a prophet or a teacher, he would not have needed followers, but only pupils and hearers. But since he is the incarnate Son of God who came in human flesh, he needs a community of followers, who will participate not merely in his teaching, but also in his Body. The disciples have communion and fellowship in the Body of Christ. They live and suffer in bodily communion with him.” – Chapter 29, page 237.
“Let the Christian remain in the world, not because of the good gifts of creation, nor because of his responsibility for the course of the world, but for the sake of the Body of the incarnate Christ and for the sake of the Church. Let him remain in the world to engage in frontal assault on it, and let him live the life of his secular calling in order to show himself as a stranger in this world all the more. But that is only possible if we are visible members of the Church.” – Chapter 30 page 264
The book ends with Chapter 32: The Image of Christ, which gives us the ‘why’ to all we previously read.
“God created man is destined to bear the image of uncreated God.” – Chapter 32, page 298
We see how we are supposed to bear God’s image by conforming to the image of Christ.
“We cannot transform ourselves into his image; it is rather the form of Christ which seeks to be formed in us (Gal 4.19), and to be manifested in us. Christ’s work in us is not finished until he has perfected his own form in us. We must be assimilated to the form of Christ in its entirety, the form of Christ incarnate, crucified and glorified.