Week 5: The Cost of Discipleship

1.Bonhoeffer opens *The Cost of Discipleship* with his famous indictment of 'cheap grace' — grace preached as a doctrine, as the church's inexhaustible treasury, dispensed without requiring repentance, discipleship, or a cross. In his words, cheap grace is 'grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.' In your own words, what is cheap grace, and what makes it so dangerous?

2.Against cheap grace, Bonhoeffer sets 'costly grace' — grace that costs a man his life and yet is the only true grace. He locates the birth of cheap grace in Luther's own experience: Luther's discovery of grace was meant to be the end of a long battle, but the church turned the conclusion into a starting point, bypassing the struggle entirely. What does this diagnosis suggest about the way Christian truth can be inherited too easily by those who did not fight for it?

3.Bonhoeffer's most famous aphorism from this book is: 'When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.' What did Bonhoeffer mean by this — and how did his own life give the words their weight? How have you personally encountered the call to 'die' in following Christ?