I started reading (listening) to The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer tonight as I ran the vacuum across the floor. I’ve started this a few times but never made it past around 15 minutes. It may not be the best book to listen to while I run (I’ll admit, it’s a little dry), but letting it soak in as I walked back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth across the living room was good tonight.

What caught my ear tonight was this line, about the “costly” gift of grace: “What has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.”

How true is that? It’s so easy to trivialize, to minimize, and to economize grace. Like it’s something we’ll find around every corner, from any source that offers “life,” and whenever we feel we need it. While all of that is really true when we truly accept it from our Father, it’s not as cheap as we make it out to be.

This was a great reminder for me. A great reminder of how much I’m loved. What hast cost God much cannot be cheap… for me.

Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1987-074-16 / CC-BY-SA [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1987-074-16 / CC-BY-SA [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

I’m looking forward to the rest of this book. Here’s the quote from above in a little more of it’s context:

“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. 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.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Image Credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1987-074-16 / CC-BY-SA [CC BY-SA 3.0 de], via Wikimedia Commons