The Cost of Discipleship with Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Over 14 days, wrestle with Bonhoeffer's radical call to follow Jesus — from the famous distinction between cheap and costly grace, through the Sermon on the Mount, to the meaning of the cross and Christian community. Written from a prison cell and a life laid down.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote The Cost of Discipleship (originally Nachfolge) in 1937, as the Nazi regime tightened its grip on Germany and on the German church. It was not an academic exercise. Bonhoeffer was running an illegal seminary at Finkenwalde, training pastors who refused to submit to Hitler's co-opted church. Within a few years, he would be arrested, imprisoned, and executed at Flossenburg concentration camp — just weeks before the war ended.
The book's opening line has become one of the most quoted sentences in modern theology: "Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church." Bonhoeffer saw a Christianity that had made peace with the world by emptying the gospel of its demands. Grace had become a doctrine to affirm rather than a power that transforms. The call to follow Jesus had been replaced by a comfortable religion that asked nothing and changed nothing.
What This Plan Covers
Over 14 days, we will work through the major themes of The Cost of Discipleship and Bonhoeffer's wider writings:
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Days 1-4 — The Call: Cheap grace versus costly grace, the meaning of Jesus's call, and the demand for single-minded obedience.
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Days 5-9 — The Sermon on the Mount: Bonhoeffer's extraordinary exposition of the Beatitudes, salt and light, enemy love, hiddenness in prayer, and freedom from anxiety.
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Days 10-12 — The Cross and Community: Discipleship as cross-bearing, the cost of life together, and the church's relationship to the world under tyranny.
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Days 13-14 — Christ and Joy: Bonhoeffer's Christology from prison, and the paradox that the costliest discipleship produces the deepest joy.
Who This Plan Is For
This plan is for believers who sense that their faith has become too comfortable — who are ready to be challenged by a man who followed Jesus all the way to the gallows and counted it gain.