It’s Free, But Not Cheap

At work, I support adults with special needs to live their best lives. Once, a group of us were waiting for a bus. I had bought ‘the guys’ (as we call those we support) a box of ice creams. There was one left over. So, I offered it to an elderly lady sitting on a nearby bench. She looked at the ice cream longingly, then looked at me with sad eyes and said, “Do I have to pay for it?” My heart melted quicker than the ice cream! “No”, I said. “It’s free.” She paused momentarily, contemplating the ‘prize.’ Gingerly, she took the ice cream from my outstretched hand. And, as she did so, her face turned to a broad smile as it dawned on her what she had just received.

I am reminded of God’s ‘free’ gift of grace. We don’t earn this grace. Jesus has already paid the debt for our waywardness by dying on the cross and so, we can come to Him just as we are, in all our mess and our need and, just like the lady in the story, with all our suspicions and fears.

But is this grace really free? We might think that, because our debt has been paid in advance, everything can be had for nothing. And that, therefore, we can continue in our old way, living like the rest of the world, modelling ourselves on the world’s standards, without aspiring to a different life under grace from our old life under sin.

But we should be careful of such thinking. The theologian, Dietrich Bonhoffer (who, for his public resistance to the Nazis, was executed in April 1945) calls such grace ‘cheap grace’. Cheap grace, Bonhoeffer says, is ‘the grace we bestow on ourselves. It is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.’

God’s grace comes at a price. It is not cheap. It is costly because it commands our obedience (John 14:15) and demands our sacrifice, that we reject the behaviours and customs of this world (Romans 12:1-2) even to the point of selling all that we have (Matthew 13:44-46), leaving our families (Matthew 10:37) and giving up our livelihoods (Luke 5:11), if that is what God is asking of us.  Costly grace is real grace, compelling us to die daily to self (Luke 9:23), to pluck out the eye that causes us to stumble (Matthew 18:9) and to lay down our lives for our friend (John 15:13).

Grace and discipleship go hand in hand. They are inseparable. Together, they confront us to submit to the yoke of Jesus, to follow Him and not to look back, whatever the cost. That’s not easy but, if we are not to cheapen grace, we must accept the discipline of discipleship.

So, in this period of spiritual preparation, traditionally known as Lent, consider this. Is there any area of your life that is still ‘of this world’ (Romans 12:2)? Do you need to let go of lesser things for the greater thing that is Jesus?