“Costly grace is the gospel that must be sought again and again, the gift which has to be asked for, the door at which one has to knock. 

It is costly, because it calls to discipleship; it is grace, because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly, because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live. It is costly, because it condemns sin; it is grace, because it justifies the sinner. Above all, grace is costly, because it was costly to God, because it cost God the life of God’s Son – ‘you were bought with a price’ – and because nothing can be cheap to us which is costly to God. Above all, it is grace because the life of God’s Son was not too costly for God to give in order to make us live. God did, indeed, give him up for us. Costly grace is the incarnation of God. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 5).

These words come from the opening of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book The Cost of Discipleship. Written in 1936 – one year after the enactment of Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws and three years following Hitler’s seizure of power – Discipleship was born out of thirty-one year old Bonhoeffer’s struggle against the heinous politics of his home country. 

It is in the grotesque shadow of a nation swaying under Hitler’s promise of prosperity, power, and preeminence that Bonhoeffer exhorts, as grounds and means of resistance, the Christian’s original call. Those called by Christ, Bonhoeffer preaches, are rooted firmly in the fact of God’s costly grace. As much as a lazy and imperial Christianity may render grace a cheap commodity, an indiscriminate insurance scheme, spoiling pardon for all manner of our mess ups, true discipleship comes only through a serious reckoning with the reality of Jesus’ sacrifice as incarnated in the transformation of our lives.

God’s grace is not cheap – far from it! It is a grace borne unto the annihilation of the beloved. How, Bonhoeffer asks us, can this priceless gift be met with a mere shrug of a shoulder, exercised only as a free pass for self-serving actions? Full realization of the fact of Christ’s sacrifice means for us to be wholly moved, without any smidge left over. It means our being fully cracked open to the pain of inflicted death in the world, anywhere in the world – just as our attention is affixed to Jesus’s demise, wrought within the very nails that held Him to the cross. It means our unabashed and undignified love for liberation, caught up in our liberation as libated by the wound on His side. In this, there is no room for complacency – though there in abundance is peace beyond understanding. In this, there is no confidence in happiness guaranteed – though there is unshakeable joy. In this, our repentance can only ever be apocalyptic – world ending, veil rending, casting us into the tomb with Christ. All things are so in total.

Any pursuit that honors first a sense of comfort and well-being, in the scheme of discipleship, is to be questioned. In the context of the torpor of Christians witnessing the rise and terror of the Nazi regime, comfort and well-being emerged as a convenient silence. For all justifications that can be offered, the implicit theological rationale made bare is this: God’s grace paid in advance for our utter failure to care for our neighbors. Cheap grace slumbers us, and we awake having murdered in the night. 

In preaching – and living – costly grace, Bonhoeffer vehemently rejected this theological perversion. Relinquishing an opportunity to study with Gandhi in 1933, and returning to Germany at the eve of war after only two weeks at New York City’s Union Theological Seminary in 1939, Bonhoeffer refused time and time again to abandon God’s community of all. In spite of his trepidation, Bonhoeffer rooted his feet in the gospel and remained doggedly committed to fighting Hitler’s power and the fatal fruits of anti-semitism, racism, fascism, and Christian nationalism – until the very end. For Bonhoeffer, this end was at the gallows at Flossenbürg extermination camp, upon which he was hanged in the early hours of April 9, 1945. His remains were never located.

This is discipleship in the streets and of the people, a faith forged stronger in community as communion. As exemplars of such communal defenders in a contemporary context, I admire such persons as Heather Heyer, Tortuguita Manuel Esteban Páez Terán, and Rachel Corrie. Here are three figures who stepped – one foot away, one state away, one ocean away – into solidarity with their neighbors. While they did not seek to die, they were killed in the course of living out their commitment to community. Each of their lives and deaths now mark ongoing struggles for the freedom, integrity, and well-being of our – yes, by virtue of God’s grace they are ours too! – neighbors.

It is not the point here to say that we must die for what we believe in. Rather, the point is to say that following what we believe in may lead us into situations of risk – situations where the action demanded by discipleship runs counter to the logic of economic gain, physical safety, etc. Risk, be it an inch or a mile, comes with the territory of our following Jesus Christ. Put it more strongly: just as beholding a pearl of incomparable value, Jesus’s death and resurrection has rendered any risk inconsequential. When it comes to working for the benefit of all, risk is of no matter. 

As we near the end of this piece, let us ask of ourselves seriously. Where in our lives does risk – ranging from the tiniest inconvenience to the life threatening – deter us from following Jesus? Are we afraid of losing our jobs, while our neighbors lose their lives? Are we afraid of being canceled, while our neighbors are losing their limbs? Are we afraid of… Let us attend to these.