Week 1: Introduction — Costly Grace vs. Cheap Grace

1.Bonhoeffer's opening salvo is: "Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church." Before engaging his argument, what does that phrase stir up in you? Does it sound liberating, alarming, or unfair?

2.Bonhoeffer defines cheap grace as "the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession." In your own words, what makes grace "cheap" in his framework — and why does he call it deadly rather than merely inadequate?

3.He then defines costly grace: "It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life." How does this paradox — that the most demanding thing is also the most freeing — sit with you? Can you think of an experience in your own life where something costly turned out to be genuinely freeing?