The Cost of Discipleship

Drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, Dietrich Bonhoeffer provides a seminal reading of the dichotomy between 'cheap grace' and 'costly grace.' Cheap grace is the grace bestowed on oneself, a grace without discipleship. Costly grace is the gospel that must be sought again and again, the girl who must be asked for, the door at which a man must know. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. The Cost of Discipleship is a compelling statement of the demands of sacrifice and ethical consistency from a man whose life and thought were exemplary articulations of a new type of leadership inspired by the Gospel.