The True Cost of Discipleship
What does it cost to be a disciple or follower of Jesus Christ? You need to be prepared for it to cost you everything. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged in a concentration camp at Flossenburg, Germany on April 9, 1945 at the age of 39. He had been a pastor, teacher, and leader of a small training school for the confessing church and had participated in the Protestant resistance movement against the Nazis.
A book he authored entitled, The Cost of Discipleship inspired the faith of a generation of Christians. One of the most notable sentences in the book is “The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” John Piper has noted that “Fleeing from death is the shortest path to a wasted life.” If you only do what will keep you the safest and most secure, your priorities are misaligned.
Bonhoeffer’s book refuted the concept of what he termed “cheap grace.” His observation was that in both America and Europe the Christian church was counting the grace of God as a common thing. In other words any sense of “awe” surrounding God was severely diminished. He believed that a true encounter with a justifying faith would not leave a person the same, but would radically change them. He believed churches were offering, even encouraging people to make “cheap” responses to the Gospel which cost nothing and were worth nothing.
One need not look far to see illustrations of what Bonhoeffer identified. We have churches with memberships 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 times or more their actual attendance. Sunday School classes with enrollments of 2 or 3 times or more the number which comes, tithing only being done by one quarter of the church or less – often much less. We have churches full of people who have never led another person to Christ, we go weeks, months, or even years without a baptism, we struggle to get volunteers for the nursery, people to work with children and youth, we struggle to get anyone involved in out-reach, we struggle to get teachers to adequately prepare their lessons, to get deacons to actually do the work of New Testament deacons, people to tolerate a service lasting much over an hour without looking at their watches, people missing several weeks at a time, not willing to do anything in the church, for the church, or with the church.
We struggle to understand little Johnny, who is now 34, who has been married and divorced twice and is now living with his latest love interest outside marriage, smokes pot, drinks heavily, looks at internet porn, and cusses like a sailor. The reason we struggle is that we know he is a Christian. The older folks at church remember when Johnny came forward with the other kids at Vacation Bible School about 25 years ago. Johnny was even baptized, but quickly drifted away from the church.
What is the problem here? Well, even though some well intentioned individual coaxed Johnny and the other kids at VBS to raise their hands and come forward Johnny’s “decision” was completely the fruit of manipulation rather than conversion. If you work at it long enough and hard enough, you can talk someone into almost anything, especially children. Salesmen have been honing their techniques for decades. Every day, salesmen sell, and people buy things they do no want or need, because they have been manipulated into “buying.”
Bonhoeffer believed justification is by grace through faith. He did not believe that the faith that justified could ever leave a person “unchanged.” The change was far beyond what could be accomplished merely through manipulation. The concept of being an “unchanged” Christian was unimaginable. It was a clear contradiction. It was simply untrue. This was the “cheap” response to the Gospel. He wrote, “The only man, who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ.”
It is a great travesty when people, of any age, are manipulated in order to produce pseudo-conversions, which of course are not conversions at all. When someone responds to the “mechanism” of salvation man has invented (i.e. walking an aisle, praying a prayer, signing a card, etc.) we actually erect yet another barrier for that person to actually come to Christ! Now we not only have a mere lost person, but we also have a lost person who believes he is saved because he has done what he was told one needs to do to become a Christian! Sadly, there will come a day when many prayer-prayed, aisle walked, baptized people find themselves in hell. They will be there because they failed to do what the Bible actually teaches they must do – turn from their sins and embrace Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of their lives. John MacArthur has written, “The only reliable evidence of a person’s being saved is not a past experience of receiving Christ, but a present life that reflects Christ.”
In far too many ways the grace of God had been cheapened in Bonhoeffer’s day. In the 65 years which have followed since his death, how much more has the precious Gospel of Jesus Christ been cheapened? The Gospel he saw as cheapened would hardly be recognizable today by him. Sad but true. Believers, and the churches they comprise must get into the New Testament and really take a look at what Jesus required of those who would follow Him and then not accept anything less!
In Christ,
Pastor Allen Raynor