Dietrich brings it every time

At about 3:30 PM, it looked like all I was going to do with my day was play guitar in my room and chat with people on the internet.  So, in order to feel like less of a loser, I thought this would be an excellent time to start attempt #3 to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship.  I usually make it halfway through the book before I get too distracted or too overwhelmed by the book's intensity, but I really, really want to make it all the way through.
So, here's an excerpt from the second full page of the first chapter:

"Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has.  It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods.  It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.  It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.  It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.  Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.  Costly grace is the Incarnation of God."

BAM.

Bonhoeffer brings the heat.






Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, New York: Simon and Shuster (1995), 45.