Grace is the answer-- we cannot for a MOMENT dispense with following Christ!

Bonhoeffer- Chapter 1 - Costly Grace.   (Continued)

"If grace is God's answer, the gift of Christian life, then we cannot for a moment dispense with following Christ.

But if grace is the data for my Christian life, it means that I set out to live the Christian life in the world with all my sins justified beforehand. I can go and sin as much as I like, and rely on this grace to forgive me, for after all the world is justified in principle by grace. I can therefore cling to my bourgeois secular existence, and remain as I was before, but with the added assurance that the grace of God will cover me. It is under the influence of this kind of "grace" that the world has been made "Christian," but at the cost of secularizing the Christian religion as never before.

The antithesis between the Christian life and the life of bourgeois respectability is at an end. The Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different from the world, in fact, in begin prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest for of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that. Grace as the data for our calculations means grace at the cheapest price, but grace as the answer to the sum means costly grace. It is terrifying to realize what use can be made of a genuine evangelical doctrine. In both cases we have the identical formula-- "justification by faith alone." Yet the misuse of the formula leads to the complete destruction of its very essence.

The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ. Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, and that the call is inseparable from the grace. But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves.'

My thoughts--

This here- 'The Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being NO different from the world, in fact, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace.' 

This is truth! It is very true that this is the sort of lie people have fallen victim too.  We can scarcely tell a Christian from a worldly person any more.  Shouldn't it be inevitable that a person following Jesus Christ will be markedly different than those following Satan? I'm not saying markedly different in putting on AIRS as the Pharisees and scribes and such. Jesus tells us to not appear as if we are fasting when we fast but He does not tell us to blend in with the world in all ways, never does He say that! When we pray we are to pray in secret as well, so Jesus isn't telling us to go about SHOWING by prayer and fasting that we are His.  Jesus gave us three chapters worth of teachings in Matthew (5,6,7) and those teachings were all about FOLLOWING Him, all about being HIS DISCIPLE in our every action and interaction. 

So many people just love to throw this saying out there- 'A Christian is a sinner, but a forgiven sinner.'  And they use this saying so they can pacify themselves for sinning. They shout to the world that YES they sin, but they're forgiven for sinning.  But how does that look to the world when that person blatantly sins over and over and over and over never striving to keep from sinning, even joking that the sin is something they'll never be able to stop? Is that what Christ told us would happen? No. Being a Christian isn't a joke, it isn't something to wave about while sinning. We need to be truly contrite, truly REPENTANT when we sin, not ACCEPTING it at all! When we get to the place of accepting sin and making excuses for it, such as we'll never be good enough, strong enough to stop that sin, then we are DENYING CHRIST because it is CHRIST who will work in us to keep us from sinning.  We aren't supposed to be strong enough, we are supposed to be surrendered enough. That surrendering will reveal the weight of the sins we have and we must repent of them! We aren't to become accepting of their evil weight upon us. Satan wants us to accept our sins as a part of who we are because he knows as soon as we do that then we are denying our Savior's power.

We CANNOT accept being like the world, we have to detest being like the world.  We have to grasp hold of COSTLY GRACE and become a TRUE DISCIPLE of the LORD'S!  A true disciple comprehends that their life will NOT be easy at all, but a constant struggle mainly with ourselves and that part of us that Satan will exploit at every opportunity. Satan does NOT want us to deny ourselves and take up a cross to follow Jesus. Satan loves us right where we are living our "normal" worldly lives, being no different from the world, telling ourselves it's our duty NOT to appear different, if we do these things then we will fall under the great deception called CHEAP GRACE.

This--'But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves'

--  is true as well.  If we DARE to use grace as the reason we do not have to truly follow Christ in the way He commands us to, then we are deceiving ourselves!

Satan would have us despair of ever being 'good enough' because then he's trapped us in one of many cages he uses to snare us. If we are caught up in despair then we are denying Christ is good enough for us. Despair leaves us no hope, not even in Christ.  But right next to that trap is another one that has us caught up in believing we do not have to do anything at all, we can sin as much as we want because Jesus only is good enough and doesn’t expect us to even try to be good enough, that'd be blasphemy.  There are many variations of these traps and the doors to them are constantly open to catch us all.   Jesus wants us to believe that HE died for us and by HIS grace which cost so much we are given SALVATION, we are forgiven of our sins. Jesus also wants us to believe Him when He tells us to 'go and sin no more', and when He gives a sermon with instruction after instruction teaching us, that we will LEARN from Him and FOLLOW HIM, trusting in HIM when we do falter, but all the while striving not to falter.

All by HIS GRACE!

In HIS LOVE forever and ever!