Why Read “The Cost of Discipleship”?

As church leaders it is helpful to have a “go-to” list of reading recommendations. I think it helpful to give a few reasons why we are recommending certain books. So here is why I often suggest one of my all-time favorite books, The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

“This is the end. For me the beginning of life.”

These are Bonhoeffer’s last known words, spoken on the way to the gallows to be hanged by members of the S.S. Black Guard in April 1945 in the Flossenburg concentration camp. He was executed because of his faith. He was not just a dedicated preacher and a prolific writer, but he lived his faith. He believed intensely in the community of believers and that Christians must oppose evil. He defied the Nazi regime by baptizing Jews and he helped start the Confessing Church. The way he lived gave life to his writings. As did his death.

I first read The Cost of Discipleship while in college. Much of his book centers on the Sermon on the Mount, but it is his section on grace that is so compelling. He confronts the notion of cheap grace, defined as preaching forgiveness without discipleship.

He insists that costly grace “is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.” This is a book I have read many times over by now. I still continue to gain new insights into what it means to live grace.

One last quote from this book: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Quite a commentary on Luke 9:23, where Jesus says that to follow him is to deny oneself and take up his cross. Or Gal. 2:20, where Paul writes that he has been crucified with Christ.

While you will not agree with everything Bonhoeffer writes, this book is definitely worth a read if you want to learn what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

Be blessed.