Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic 1937 book, The Cost of Discipleship, describes cheap grace as the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline and communion without confession. It’s the sort of grace that allowed would-be disciples to avoid confronting the evils of Nazi Germany.
These days, cheap grace has competition. In an effort to appease a different kind of cultural complacency, grace has come to mean a bar that is set quite low. Offering this grace requires little to no accountability, enforces few if any standards, and bears almost no fruit. In churches, this low-level grace is most apparent in our communal and organizational life. It translates into a kind of laissez faire, you’re off the hook, no accountability stance.
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