The Cost Of Discipleship -- By: Charles C. Bing

Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 06:1 (Spring 1993)
Article: The Cost Of Discipleship
Author: Charles C. Bing


The Cost Of Discipleship

Charles C. Bing

Editorial Board
Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Pastor, Burleson Bible Church
Burleson, Texas

Discipleship is costly. The Scriptures are clear that to be a disciple in the fullest sense of the term means that a person must pay a price. There is no view of discipleship which would disagree with this conclusion. However, the disagreement comes over whether the conditions for costly discipleship are also conditions for salvation. This critical difference is the subject of this third and last article in my series on discipleship.

I. The Issue

If the conditions of discipleship are also conditions of salvation, then every Christian is, by definition, a disciple, and salvation, by definition, is costly. If these conditions are not conditions for salvation, then the issue of discipleship must be distinguished from the issue of salvation so that discipleship is truly costly and salvation, truly free. We will now survey the two opposing views.

The “Costly Grace” View

The view that salvation is costly received its modern impetus from the German theologian and activist Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who expressed his views in the book The Cost of Discipleship, first published in English in 1949. He wrote of “costly grace” as opposed to “cheap grace,” which he described as “Grace without price; grace without cost,” or “grace without discipleship.”1 To him, costly grace is inseparable from

discipleship:

The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who left all to follow Christ. Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, and that the call is inseparable from grace.2

Bonhoeffer’s concept of “costly grace” has appealed to many who think it is the answer to the apathy and worldliness of contemporary Christians. The proponents of Lordship Salvation have naturally taken interest in costly discipleship as a solution to the growing number of people who profess to be Christians but who do not live up to their profession. Poe states, “The concern for discipleship did not emerge as a theoretical concept in an academic setting, rather it resulted from the phenomenon of people claiming to be Christians who have no interest in the things of Christ.”3 Lordship proponents solve this problem by demanding that sinners pay a price for their salvation, the price of submission and obedience. J. I. Packe...

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