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There are books that make you feel better about your faith. The Cost of Discipleship is not one of them — and that is exactly why Premier Christianity includes it among the books that have most profoundly shaped the Church.
Bonhoeffer wrote it in the 1930s, in Germany, as the Nazi regime was tightening its grip. His opening proposition — the distinction between "cheap grace" and "costly grace" — was aimed squarely at a church that had reduced the gospel to a comfortable permission slip. Cheap grace, he wrote, is grace without discipleship. Costly grace is the call of Jesus, which demands everything.
The book is an extended commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, and it is one of those rare works that makes you feel the text is reading you rather than the other way around. Bonhoeffer writes not as a distant theologian but as a man working out, in real time, what it means to follow Christ when the cost is becoming terrifyingly clear.
He was executed by the Nazis in April 1945, just weeks before the end of the war.
About the Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and resistance fighter. His other essential works include Life Together — a brief, luminous account of Christian community — and the posthumously published Letters and Papers from Prison.
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Want to know more about the full list then read our blog article here.
