One of my all-time favorite book is The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In it, Bonhoeffer draws a distinction between what he calls ‘cheap grace’ and ‘costly’ grace, and he essentially makes the argument that discipleship is something that cost us something, but that the cost is worth it. Recently I started reading The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship by Dallas Willard. Willard’s premise is basically that we have made discipleship optional within in the church. In other words, we have made a great omission from the great commission (go and make disciples…). The result, Willard says, is that there are many who say they are Christians yet are doing very little, or even nothing, to continue to grow in Christlikeness. In the book he has a section entitled “The Cost of Nondiscipleship” in which he addresses the consequences of this. Willard writes,
“It was right and good of Bonhoeffer to point out that one cannot be a disciple of Christ without forfeiting things normally sought in human life, and that one who pays little in the world’s coinage to bear his name has reason to wonder wher ehe or she stands with God. But the cost of nondiscipleship is far greater- even when this life alone is considered- than the price paid to walk with Jesus, constantly learning from him.
Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstance,s power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, nondiscipleship costs you exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10). The cross-shaped yoke of Christ is after all an instrument of liberation and power to those who live in it with him and learn the meekness and lowliness of heart that brings rest to the soul.”
I think it would be fair to say that we don’t spend much time in church considering the cost of nondiscipleship. I certainly don’t spend much time thinking about the cost of nondiscipleship in my own life, and perhaps that’s a bit of a problem. Last night at Seven24 I briefly mentioned that in our western culture today there are as many opportunities to worship false gods as there have been in any culture at any time in history. Many of us, myself included, are often drawn to worship these false gods (money, material success, work, social status, etc.), with the consequence being that we seek to find our identity in those things rather than finding it in Christ. This does indeed cost us the abiding peace that can only be known through following Christ.
Next week at Seven24 we’re going to talk about the passage in Mark where Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” That is an intense statement to be sure, and while the way of Jesus most certainly does entail sacrifice-namely sacrifice of the self- it is also, as Willard says a means of liberation for those who will carry their cross with Christ and learn the meekness and lowliness of heart that brings rest to the soul.
One thing I also said last night is that our worship of false gods is very subtle in our culture today. In other words, we can be doing it without even realizing it. The logical extension of this is that it is then more difficult to recognize our need for the liberation that can come through this sort of self-denial that Jesus speaks of.
I don’t really have a particular conclusion that I’m drawing for all of this just yet. These are just some of the many issues that this book is inspiring me to try to work through in my own life. I’m trying to identify the false worship that takes place in my own life, and I’m similarly trying to identify the practices of my life that are interfering with my participation in the journey of discipleship with Christ.
