The Cost of Discipleship

One of the most important theologians of the twentieth century illuminates the relationship between ourselves and the teachings of Jesus in this classic of Christian ethics.

What can the call to discipleship, the adherence to the word of Jesus, mean today to the businessman, the soldier, the laborer, or the aristocrat? What did Jesus mean to say to us? What is his will for us today? Drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, Bonhoeffer answers these timeless questions by providing a seminal reading of the dichotomy between ‘cheap grace’ and ‘costly grace.’

‘Cheap grace,’ Bonhoeffer wrote, ‘is the grace we bestow on ourselves…grace without discipleship.’ ‘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. Written in the shadow of the Nazi regime, The Cost of Discipleship remains one of the most powerful statements of Christian faith ever written.