Avoiding Cheap Grace, Fighting for Costly Grace

I spent a good amount of time this week preparing to meet with the worship leaders at Christ's Church. We do this every three months or so to spend some time catching up, praying, working out scheduling, and discussing direction and new ideas. I love these meetings! One, because all of these leaders are great people and lovers of God, so I look forward to spending time with them. Two, because they often have different perspectives and ideas that are essential to giving us a direction that is more complete and balanced.

Something I wanted to discuss in this meeting was our continued effort to be intentional about the content of our worship. The phrase I've heard in many discussions and writings goes something like, "show me your songs and I'll tell you your theology." So the question we have to ask ourselves is, "What does the theological picture that we're collectively painting look like?"

One thing I wrote down on our outline in regards to content was "avoid enabling a concept of cheap grace..." This caught me off guard when I wrote it, because I hadn't been thinking of that term. I realized it would be good to get some definitions of what cheap grace. In my search I found some relevant excerpts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, and I share some of those here now.

"Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian 'conception' of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins....

Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. 'All for sin could not atone.' Well, then, let the Christian live like the rest of the world, let him model himself on the world’s standards in every sphere of life, and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin....

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. "

If you're curious about how he described "costly grace", click here. And if you'd like to learn more about Bonheoffer, I found his wikipedia page to be very interesting and inspiring, especially the part about his persecution and execution by the Nazi's.