The Call to Discipleship

The salvation that Christ brings can be understood as the gift of life that frees men and women from all forms of bondage and restores them to their lost personhood. Emancipated by Christ, we are freed from the alienation of our own lives, the yoke of self-interest, the idolatries of our social and political order, the oppressive rule of the principalities and powers, the claims of imperial states, the follies of religion. Salvation is the acceptance of that gift of life, made possible by God's grace and made actual by our faith, in the midst of a world dominated by death. It embraces the call to discipleship, the call to show forth the reality of that new life and freedom by following in obedience to Jesus Christ. Affirming the orthodoxy of Christ and the reality of the salvation he offers includes the command to serve the world in demonstrating the power of his gospel and bring his message of life and liberation into confrontation with the forces of death and oppression of the present world-system.

The greatest heresy of the contemporary church is its lack of concern for the demands of discipleship. Obedience to Christ has been seriously compromised for what Bonhoeffer once called "cheap grace."

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.... Such grace 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 costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap.