In The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
warned about the dangers of what he called ‘cheap grace,’ the teaching that stresses only that grace is free, so it doesn’t really matter how we live. The solution, he said, was not to return to legalism, but to focus on how seriously God takes sin and on how he could only save us from it at infinite cost to himself. Understanding this must and will profoundly reshape our lives. We will not be able to live in a selfish, cowardly way. We will stand up for justice and sacrifice for our neighbor. And we won’t mind the cost of following after Christ when we compare it to the price he paid to rescue us.
This paragraph from Tim Keller’s Prodigal God struck me this evening. The way I live in light of christ’s sacrifice is based largely on what it does for me and on what I gain.
I think very little of the actual sacrifice and what it cost to make it.
The logical conclusion of this discrepancy manifests in my complaining spirit, my apathy, and my sense of entitlement, as if Christ owed me this life but came up short on his end of the deal.
Jesus gave me everything I didn’t deserve, and instead of being grateful, I whine like a Gospel trust fund baby.
I see this attitude in one of my kids and spend a lot of energy rolling my eyes because it’s so irritating to watch.
Now that I see it in myself, I’ll need one of you to come over and yank the log out of my eye.