For God, Family and Republic

Today, Saturday February 4, 2006, marks the centennial of the birth of the legendary German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau on February 4, 1906. His father was a prominent German psychiatrist in Berlin; his mother home-schooled the children. He studied at Tubingen, Berlin, and abroad in the United States at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

I bury myself in a very unchristian and immodest way. A crazed ambition, which some have noticed about me, makes life difficult...Then something else happened, something that up to this day has changed and rearranged my life. I came for the first time to the Bible...I had already often preached; I had already seen much of the church, even spoken and written about it - and still I had never become a Christian, but instead was very furiously and unrestrainedly my own Lord...Also I had never prayed, or only very little. I was with utter abandonment entirely content with myself. The Bible has liberated me from that, and especially the Sermon on the Mount. Since that time everything has become different.
A Letter to Elisabeth Zinn, 1936

He was strongly opposed to the Nazi regime, but returned home to share in the suffering of his people, because he believed he had no place in helping in the reconstruction unless he stood alongside them. He founded the Confessing Church and rejected attempts to pollute the Christian church with Nazi ideology or put them church under the thumb of the state. As a leader of the Protestant resistance, he covertly supported the Allies, and believed that Nazi Germany's destruction was the only way to save Germany. He tried to run a seminary of the Confessing Church which was closed by the Nazis. His life reflected the moral dilemma and struggles of believers in standing up to tyranny, and persecution against the church and others.

Bonhoeffer at times become a riddle unto himself, as he tirelessly confronted his own sinful nature, and affirmed the vitality of grace.

Who Am I?
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.

Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equally, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!

On October 5, 1944, Bonhoeffer was transferred from Tegel to the main Gestapo prison in Berlin in the Prinz Albrechstrasse. Bonhoeffer died April 9, 1945 at the Flossenburg concentration camp. He was executed by the National Socialists after being loosely implicated in the Abwehr plot against Hitler. He was arrested, imprisoned, and hanged. He died with composure and peace.

Though a Lutheran and outside of my Reformed theological tradition, Bonhoeffer will forever remain a hero and a great Christian teacher in my book. I've read his great classics The Costs of Discipleship and Ethics. Few if any books have elicited tears, save the Holy Bible but the The Costs of Discipleship was one of them.

Costly Grace by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack's wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church's inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?

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. The Church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto a part in that grace. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.

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." The world goes on in the same old way, and we are still sinners "even in the best life" as Luther said. Well, then let the Christian live like the rest of the world, let him 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. That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of 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, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the Cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows Him.

Costly grace is the Gospel which must be sought 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 costs 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 deliver Him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs. It is therefore the living word, the Word of God, which He speaks as it pleases Him. Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow Him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and My burden light."