Book Report: “The Cost of Discipleship” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

And so Dietrich Bonhoeffer did. Die, that is. At the hands of the Nazis at Flossenberg, who hung him for his involvement in a failed attempt to assassinate the devil Hitler.

For the uninitiated, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian and pastor who, after escaping his native Germany, willingly returned to aid the “Confessing Church” in its (mostly) passive resistance to the Nazi regime. This resistance consisted of building up Christians to love and serve one another as genuine believers must and showing hospitality and service to their beleaguered neighbors, oppressed by the Gestapo.

Dr. Bonhoeffer is well-known for his martyrdom, but also for his theological brilliance and literary output. He was what we might call a “Christian humanist”: a faithful follower of Jesus who not only believed in the utter depravity of our species, but the divine goodness which made human flourishing possible—and a prospect on which we must not give up. The Cost of Discipleship is Bonhoeffer’s most famous work. It is not an easy read. There are no stories or easy-to-follow outlines. The point is too simple for that: to be a Christian means to follow Christ as closely as we can, even though it cost us everything. That is the entire point of being a Christian, and the only way to do it. The Church is very good at doling out “cheap grace,” as Bonhoeffer calls it: grace which requires no repentance, baptism which requires no confession, church membership which requires no discipline. We leave “costly grace” for the monks who feel called by God to give up everything. Why should we have to sacrifice our lives and worldly affections? We’ll let the monks do it.

But the Sermon on the Mount—which receives a long treatment in this work—was not intended for monks. It was intended for us. Jesus’ insistence that discipleship be marked by obedience is not just for pastors, but for people.

This is a simple but radical notion, and appropriate to the times. In an effort to make peace with the world, advance our agendas and fill out our pews, modern Christians have lowered the standards of faith to exclude radical obedience. As did the established German church prior to World War II, both conservative and liberal American Christians have found common cause with politicians who pass themselves off as Christians, but clearly aren’t. (And how did that end?) Christ calls us to more than that. Thanks to modern evangelical authors like David Platt (author of Radical—a popular call to the same sort of sacrifice), serious discipleship is again a theme in Christ’s church. If you can’t handle Bonhoeffer’s dry prose, try Platt without feeling guilty. The point is the same, that there is no such thing as easy Christianity. To quote GK Chesterton, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”

Not tried by all, that is. Some, like Bohoeffer, found Christianity difficult and tried it all the same. His life and ultimate sacrifice remind us that faith requires change so radical the Bible calls it “death.” One cannot be born again unless one dies, first—either at the end of a rope, or in the costly discipleship that should be the norm for every follower of Jesus Christ.

-MRH (December 2018)