Trinity VI 2023

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance
​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.
                                    Dietrich Bonhoeffer  The Cost of Discipleship
 

We begin today’s sermon with a quotation from Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the 20th century’s great Christian witnesses and martyrs for the faith. Bonhoeffer, as many of you know, was a Lutheran pastor and theologian, who was a key mover in the German Christian resistance to Hitler during the Second World War. Bonhoeffer was born into a prominent German family, studied at the University of Berlin, and trained for the ministry in Barcelona, Spain, and then at Union Theological Seminary in New York. While in New York, he began to realize the power of God’s Grace in a radical new way. He spent much time at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, where, he would later say, I moved from phraseology to reality. He moved from believing in the words that constitute doctrine to living it out practically. Bonhoeffer’s life was cut short. Accused of being an accomplice in the plot on the Fuhrer’s life, Hitler hanged him. He was 39 years old when he died. But up until his death, he left the world with remarkable reflections on the Gospel and the understanding of God’s truth. He suffered many things, but chiefly he suffered to live in Jesus Christ, and his writings led men to embrace not cheap but costly Grace that comes to man only through the Sacrifice of God’s own Son.
         
Cheap grace, of course, is easy enough to fall into. Fallen man is lazy and cowardly when it comes to suffering. Cheap grace pleases the soul that cannot bear to keep his eyes on the Cross. Cheap grace is found in just persons that have no need of repentance (St. Luke xv. 7) or forgiveness. Cheap grace characterizes those who irrationally presume that man should neither play any part in redemption nor have a relationship with God the Father, through the suffering of the Cross, by the hard discipline of the Holy Ghost. And while cheap grace might make many feel good about themselves, the fact of the matter is that cheap grace can’t save us. Cheap grace makes a mockery of Our Lord’s suffering and crucifixion. Cheap grace is a fraud and a lie that proves costly to those who embrace it.  

Christians believe in costly grace. Costly grace involves serious confrontation with the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Grace, of course, is freely given. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim. ii 3,4) God gives His Grace to save all men, but on His terms. His terms involve the Cross and every man’s relation to it. It is never forced; through his free will man, can either accept or reject it. Man must play a part in his redemption. He does this by using his free will to embrace God’s Grace. Following the decision to embrace it, either it lives on or it dies. God’s costly grace is offered to the soul freely, requiring that constant vigilance that wills to grow spiritually through suffering.  
         
In this morning’s Epistle, we are invited to contemplate costly Grace. Grace, as understood by St. Paul, requires surrender and suffering. The costliness of Grace is first found in the price paid by God to save all human beings. The cost paid by God the Father was the death of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. The cost paid by Christ was His life, freely and lovingly given to us all on the Cross. The cost paid by the Spirit is the incessant loving determination to incorporate us into this life of Grace. The Spirit, alive and well in the heart of Jesus, reveals His Yes to God, and thus a life that suffers perfectly to do the Father’s will. For Christ, to be moved by God’s will through the Spirit meant that it would cost Him His life. Grace is not cheap. It is purchased with the lifeblood of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Christians are called to embrace the costly Grace that flows into human life through the death of Jesus Christ. Christians must enter the death of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is our Yes to God, and Yes to God means death, real death. But how can we enter death before we die? Can we die before our physical natures give up the ghost? On the face of it, it seems implausible. Death is death, and we die when we have breathed our last. So, what does it mean to enter Christ’s death?
Death is a cessation, an ending of life as we know it. Death leaves life behind. Death is an end, which most think is final. Christians must disagree. Death for Christians, in addition to being something that we shall all endure in a physical way, is also a spiritual virtue ­– a habit in time that will ensure our journey into a new kind of life. Christians believe that spiritual death is an inward and spiritual virtue. Of course, man dies to things every day. The cost of pursuing what he loves demands that man must die to whatever threatens his betterment and well-being. In the Christian sense, the cost man pays is dying to his old sinful self. And this is precisely what St. Paul is talking about in today’s Epistle. 

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (Romans vi. 3.4)
 
Grace is costly, not cheap. Grace comes to us through the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. Grace comes to us in Christ’s Yes to God, which Yes demands death – first His, and then ours. Death is needed, spiritual death, our deaths to ourselves, the cost we must pay for Grace to abound. This is the cost of Grace. It is the death of Jesus Christ shared with us. It must mean our spiritual death to sin in Him. Death is linked by St. Paul to baptism. He teaches that we are initiated into the death of Jesus Christ. The death of Jesus Christ is God’s response to our sin. Christ brings sin to death in Himself. The Father gives Himself to us completely in his Son’s Yes. He sends His Holy Spirit to us that we too may say Yes to Him and die. Grace is costly, it requires nothing less than everything. If we desire the Grace of God, we must say Yes to God and die to ourselves in Christ’s death.
         
Imagine it if we took Jesus’ Yes to God seriously. Imagine if in the face of sin’s determination to destroy us, we continued to say Yes to God. Imagine if we found that Grace is not cheap, but costly. What would happen? Again, it will cost us everything. It will cost us our families, our friends, our riches, our possessions, and all else. What is significant, though, is that it will cost us ourselves. Grace is not cheap. It comes at a price. Our Yes to God demands all of ourselves, our souls, and our bodies. Sin’s aim is to kill life, both physical and spiritual, and to convince us that this life’s death is final and conclusive. But if we say Yes to God in the face of sin’s temptations, we shall die to the lie that sin will forever enslave us. We shall die to the lie that we cannot rise up out of death, here and now, by the Spirit of Jesus Christ. When we say Yes to God in the face of sin, we deny sin any power over us at all. When we say Yes to God, the unchanging love of God’s power will surround and envelop us. We become alive, alive to God and all the potential for eternal life with Him. Suddenly, the true, the beautiful, and the good will enter our hearts. The power of God will generate new life out of our old sinful selves. Our Yes to God will become the birth of His life in us, through Christ, and by the Spirit.

The perfect and persistent Yes to God of Jesus is crucified by man – by us. Death is sin’s end, and Jesus embraces it in His Yes to God. Jesus doesn’t respond to sin but only to God. Even His wrongful and unmerited death can become a reality where man says Yes to God. In Jesus’ death, we find the pattern and model that can say Yes to God. Our baptism into Christ’s death calls us to suffer the cost. His death is our Yes to God and is summarized in today’s Collect.
O God, who hast prepared for them that love thee such good things as pass man’s understanding: Pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that we, loving thee above all things, may obtain thy promises, that exceed all that we can desire. 
 
When we say Yes to God in Jesus Christ, our old Adam needs never again be the slave of sin. Our Yes to God in Christ means that we can love Him above all things, dying to ourselves, with a righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees (St. Matthew v. 20). God’s Grace in Jesus Christ is justice and righteousness that exceeds and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It will cost us everything not to render evil for evil. Grace is costly but God’s justice is Christ’s loving Yes to God and the forgiveness of our sins. It will cost us ourselves if we love Him above all things to obtain His promises, which exceed all that we can desire. (Idem) Costly Grace leads to true and unending life with God because we cooperate with our Master, Jesus Christ, as He works His redemption into our souls. Costly grace is Christ’s work in us. Let us persevere with the aid of Christ’s healing Sacrament, Broken Bread and Poured out wine as Broken Body and Poured out Blood for our suffering souls’ refreshment and encouragement.

Amen.
©wjsmartin

 
 
 

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