A Dangerous Life of Costly Grace

For those of you with a theological man-crush on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, this is your day.  On February 4, 1906 he was born in Breslau, Germany.  He became a prolific leader in the German church and was actively involved in opposing the Nazi regime.  Believing that Hitler was like a madman “driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders,” he joined an assassination plot to kill him.  Refusing to flee to the refuge of America he was arrested, placed in a concentration camp, and finally hanged just days before Allied troops liberated the camp where he was held.  He is the author of The Cost of Discipleship and Letters from Prison as well as a host of other books that are still influencing the church today.  Speaking of the cost of grace, he writes:

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.  It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is 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: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.  Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.  Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

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