Grace isn't Cheap

I passed a church billboard this week that read:

"Grace is free but it isn't cheap."

There's a lot of truth in that short statement. God freely gives us eternal life through faith in Christ. While that gift is free to us, it cost God the life of his only Son.

In a book called The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer described the difference between “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” Cheap grace, he said, is grace without a commitment and response from the believer. It is grace without servanthood. Costly grace, said Bonhoeffer, moves us to respond to the call of Jesus.

Lots of people believe in Jesus. They just love him to pieces. They worship and adore him. They praise his name. They invite him into their hearts and accept him as their Lord and Savior. But not many people are willing to follow him - to put their faith into action. In the second chapter of James it says faith without works is dead.

For the most part, believing “in” Jesus is really believing things “about” Jesus—that Jesus is divine, that he died for our sins, that he will come again to judge humanity and to establish his kingdom. But this kind of belief does not necessarily take the teachings of Jesus seriously. True Christianity is standing up for what you believe and being different in a culture where most Christians blend in with the values, lifestyles, economics and politics of the predominant culture of their society.

Following Jesus is about listening and doing. It is about putting into practice the things that Jesus taught. It is about a lifestyle that sets one apart from others.

Are you an admirer, a worshipper, or have you become a follower?


Ephesians 2:8 -9 "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith -and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God -- not by works, so that no one can boast."

John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."