Costly Grace

Grace is costly, then, not because it is an idea; it is no principle, program, or doctrine. Grace is costly because it is a person; it is the very Christ who calls us. Jesus’s person is the living reality of grace itself. And because it is a person who calls us to come and follow, it is not base in our own works, it is not based in the power of the human will to create for itself. Grace is based solely on the encounter with the person who lives and calls us to himself through love and life.

Christian faith is no “idea”; it is, at its core, first and finally, a person. Christian faith exists not through its ideas, institutional programs, principles, and doctrines, but only because the person of Jesus Christ lives and continues to call us, even today, Bonhoeffer would say, beckoning our young people to come and Nachfolgen, to come and follow. Christian faith is not believing in the ideas of Christianity, but following the person of the living Christ.—Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker, page 182