Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.Ĭheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner.

In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. The Church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto a part in that grace. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure the remission of sins. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian 'conception' of God. After we discard the neo-orthodox teachings, we do well to pay heed to Bonhoeffer's diatribe against cheap grace: Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. He correctly analyzed the dangers of the church's frivolous attitude toward grace. But Bonhoeffer spoke powerfully against the secularization of the church. Bonhoeffer's theological perspective was neo-orthodox, and evangelicalism rightly rejects much of his teaching. He was hanged in 1945 by SS guards, but not before his writings had left their mark. Cheap? The cost is actually far more than the buyer could possibly realize, though the 'grace' is absolutely worthless.īonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and Nazi resister. It is a man-made grace reminiscent of the indulgences Rome was peddling in Martin Luther's day. It is a bargain-basement, damaged-goods, washed-out, moth-eaten, second-hand grace. It's a grace that is 'cheap' in value, not cost.

Many years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer coined a term that has come to characterize much of evangelical Christianity - it's the term 'cheap grace.' Cheap grace is in reality a self-imparted grace, a pseudo-grace, and in the end the consequences of living by it are very, very costly.Ĭheap grace is not at all a reference to God's grace it's a contemptible counterfeit.

What does it mean to give someone grace