Dietrich Bonhoeffer— (February 4, 1906 – April 9, 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, participant in the German Resistance movement against Nazism, and a founding member of the Confessing Church. He was involved in plots planned by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He was arrested in March 1943, imprisoned, and eventually hanged just before the end of the World War II in Europe.   

Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. 

Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous.  So we remain alone with our sin, living lies and hypocrisy….He who is alone with his sins is utterly alone.  But to deviate from the truth for the sake of some prospect of hope of our own can never be wise, however sight that deviation may be.  It is not our judgment of the situation which can show us what is wise, but only the truth of the Word of God.  Here alone lies the promise of God’s faithfulness and help.  It will always be true that the wisest course for the disciple is always to abide solely by the Word of God in all simplicity.                                                                                               

The only thing we take with us is our obedience                                                                                                  

True mortification of our carnal nature is not a simple matter of denial and discipline.  It is an internal, spiritual matter of finding more contentment in Christ than in food.The flesh resists this daily humiliation, first by a frontal attack, and later by hiding itself under the words of the Spirit (i.e., in the name of “evangelical liberty”).  We claim liberty from all legal compulsions, from self-martyrdom and mortification and play this off against the proper evangelical use of discipline and asceticism; we thus excuse our self-indulgence and irregularity in prayer, in meditation and in our bodily life.  But the contrast between our behavior and the word of Jesus is all too painfully evident.  We forget that discipleship means estrangement from the world, and we forget the real joy and freedom which are the outcome of a devout rule of life.                                                                                             

When Christ calls a man, “he bids him come and die,” there are different kinds of dying, it is true; but the essence of discipleship is contained in those words

Man must follow him who has served and passed through this world as the living , the dying and the risen Lord.  Therefore, wherever it pleases God to put man in this world, the Christina must be ready for martyrdom and death.  It is only in this way that man learns faith.                                                                                    

When a man really gives up trying to make something out of him-self-a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman, a righteous or unrighteous man…when in the fullness of tasks, questions, success or ill-hap, experiences and perplexities, a man throws himself into the arms of God…then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane.  That is faith, that is metanoia and it is thus that he becomes a man and Christian.  How can a man wax arrogant if in a this-sided life he shares the suffering of God?”                                                                                                           

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church.  We are fighting today for costly grace.  Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack’s wares.  The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices.  Grace is represented as the church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessing with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits…Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.  Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.  Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has.  It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods.  It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.  Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.  Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.  It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives man the only true life.  It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.  Above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘ye were bought at a price’, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.                                                                                               

Give me such love for God and men, as will blot out all hatred and bitterness… A Christian is someone who shares the suffering of God in the world.                                                                                               

Death is the supreme festival on the road to freedom                                                                                               

A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses.”                                                                   

Happy are they who know that discipleship simple means the life which springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship                                                                                               

Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Share my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and death. Come with me in my death, come with me in my suffering, come with me as I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death.                                                                  -

“Who am I?
This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me,
these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine.”
                                                           

The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know them-selves to be poor and imperfect, who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manger. God comes. The Lord Jesus comes. Christmas comes. Christians rejoice!”.. When once again Christmas comes and we hear the familiar carols and sing the Christmas hymns, something happens to us… The hardest heart is softened. We recall our own childhood. We feel again how we then felt, especially if we were separated from a mother. A kind of homesickness comes over us for past times, distant places, and yes, a blessed longing for a world without violence or hardness of heart. There is something more; a longing for the safe lodging of the everlasting Father. And that leads our thoughts to the curse of homelessness which hangs heavily over the world.”…. Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Share my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and death. Come with me in my death, come with me in my suffering, come with me as I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death.

Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs.  It is therefore the living Word, the Word of God, which God speaks as it pleases God.  Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart.  Grace is costly because it compels a person to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light…”  –From A Testament to Freedom p.308  

Is the price we are paying today with the collapse of the organized churches anything else but an inevitable consequence of grace acquired too cheaply?  We gave away preaching and sacraments cheaply; we performed baptisms and confirmations; we absolved an entire people, unquestioned and unconditionally; out of human love we handed over what was holy to the scornful and unbelievers.  We poured out rivers of grace without end, but the call to rigorously follow Christ was seldom heard.  What happened to the insights of the ancient church, which in the baptismal teaching watches so carefully over the boundary between the church and the world, over costly grace?  What happened to Luther’s warning against a proclamation of the gospel which made people secure in their godless lives?  When was the world ever Christianized more dreadfully and wickedly than here?…The biblical wisdom that the sin of the fathers are visited on the children unto the third and fourth generation has become true in us.  Cheap grace was very unmerciful to our Protestant church. —from Discipleship 53-54