“The best things in life are free” – so goes an old saying. The air we breathe, the beauty of the world around us, the joy of human relationships. Life is free!
The blessings of God are free as well. “Freely, you have received”, says Jesus. We are offered the free gift of eternal life through Jesus and his work on the cross. Forgiveness, reconciliation, salvation, the gift of the Holy Spirit. All free. That is the amazing offer available to people in Christian faith.
However, it would be a huge error to think that because these things are free they are cheap. Often we equate the two. It would be a mistake to think that because God freely gives, we can do what we like, and there is no consequence. God’s gifts may be free, but they are not cheap.
It was the German writer Dietrich Bonhoeffer who came up with the expression ‘costly grace’. He contrasted this with ‘cheap grace’. Cheap grace , he said, was grace without actual life change. It was faith without repentance, belief without consequent action, grace without discipleship. Such cheap grace was really no grace at all and left us where we were.
By contrast, he says that costly grace recognises the cost of our salvation and freedom. It recognises the call to die to self and to live a new life. It recognises the on-going call to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Jesus. As Bonhoeffer starkly put it, “when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die”.
In our comfortable society it is easy to become self-satisfied. It is easy to take faith for granted while we simply get on with living however we want to live. Bonhoeffer reminds us, indeed Jesus tells us, that true discipleship always bears a cost. Indeed, so many of those early disciples paid with their very lives. Many are still doing so.
In our world today, where so many give their lives for a delusional cause, destroying or blowing others up in the process, what’s the price for us in serving Christ? To what extent am I prepared to give myself to the cause of Christ’s redemptive love? Or am I content to sit back as a spectator or armchair critic of what others are doing?
Yes, the best things in life are indeed free, but they do not come without cost or responsibility. May we be as dedicated to the gospel of Christ in our day, as many in our world are dedicated to a cause of terror.