Killing Hitler and Following Jesus

I first started reading this book in Winter 2006. I never finished it, and its been so long that I've decided to start from the beginning again.

It was written in the mid-to-late '30s by the German, Lutheran scholar Dietrich Bonhoeffer. During WWII he was involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. I may be wrong, but because of his disregard to the Fuhrer's laws on holding church meetings he was imprisoned and eventually hung.

In the first chapter he says that Christianity has ruined the grace of the Almighty. With wit and sarcasm, he highlights the flaws of the church's assumptions. Here are some clippings:

"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace....

"Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principal, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian 'conception' of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure the remission of sins."

Here is where it gets good:

"Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.... Well, then, let the Christian live like the rest of the world, let him model himself on the world's standards in every sphere of life, and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin.... Let him not attempt to erect a new religion of the letter by endeavouring to live a life of obedience to the commandments of Jesus Christ!"

"Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.... the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance.... 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."