"When Christ calls a man,
he bids him come and die."
________________________
THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP
Call me, Claim me, Choose me, Crush me,
Shake me, Break me, Hold me, Remold me,
Shape me in Your Word so I will love Your Truth.
Keep me in Your perfect sight as I take aim on You.
Change me, Challenge me, Cover me, Convince me,
Blind me in Your Light so eye can't find my way;
Lead me, Free me, Watch over me, Use me,
Pour Your Spirit out to encourage my faith.
Comfort me, Carry me, Counsel me, Control me,
Warn me of every pit into which I'd surely fall;
Walk with me, Talk with me, Teach me to see,
Open my desire to want to be where You are.
Cut me, Clean me, Close me, Consume me,
Come live in me; Create in me a newborn heart;
Sing with me, Cry with me, Dance with me, Jesus;
Make me holy, make me righteous, make me perfect.
Capture me, Conquer me, Create in me a hope, a Friend;
That in Christ even now I can live as a citizen of Heaven.
JEFF POLLOCK
APRIL 14, 2009
The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering
which every man must experience is the call to abandon the
attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man
which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark
upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union
with his death - we give over our lives to death. Thus it
begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise
god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning
of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he
bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the
first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow
him, or it may be a death like Luther's, who had to leave
the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the
same death every time - death in Jesus Christ, the death
of the old man at his call. (The Cost of Discipleship, 99)
BreakPoint: Please view our online version. 'The Cost of Discipleship' The Forgotten Price In this month’s Great Books series, Dr. Ken Boa turns his attention to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Dis- cipleship. The book’s greatness lies not only in the truths expressed, but also in the fact that the author lived those truths in his own life so powerfully. In 1939, just two years after Bonhoeffer wrote The Cost of Discipleship, American friends arranged his passage from Germany to the United States. While others busily planned a speaking tour for Bonhoeffer, he grew increas- ingly unsettled. He wrote a letter to Reinhold Neibuhr who had sponsored his trip explaining that leaving Germany had been a mistake. He knew that Christians in Germany would have to choose between desiring their nation’s defeat to preserve Christian civilization or desiring their nation’s victory and thereby destroying their civilization. “I know which of these alternatives I must choose,” wrote Bonhoeffer, “but I cannot make that choice in security.” Bonhoeffer then returned to Germany knowing that following Jesus would have a tremendous cost, but also knowing that whatever that cost was it was worth it to remain near to his Lord. Imprisoned for two years for his part in the German resistance movement, just three weeks before the liberation of Berlin, Bonhoeffer was executed. As Dr. Ken Boa says in the Great Books Audio series, “Today we define discipleship at best as impartation of a certain . . . knowledge rather than life-changing ap- proach to come and follow Jesus.” Bonhoeffer begins the work by showing exactly how much we’ve reduced Christian discipleship by contrasting the notions of cheap and costly grace. Cheap grace he wrote, “is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession. . . .” In short, no desire to change. In contrast, costly grace is a call to follow Jesus. “It is costly,” writes Bonhoeffer, “be- cause it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.” Bonhoeffer was concerned that with the Christianization of the Western world had come a cheapening of grace, denying the very essence of Christianity. To take the name “Christian” and yet cling to what he called “bourgeois secular existence” disturbed him. And we saw the results clearly in the tragedy of Christians being silent in the face of the Holocaust. My concern today is that we learn this lesson and not become comfortable with cheap grace here in our own land. We need to re-read this classic because somehow we’ve forgotten how radical it is to follow the call of Jesus. We’ve forgotten that the disciples left behind the security of their nets and boats, for the gracious uncertainty of a life of faith. And we’ve forgotten that follow- ing Christ will lead us down a road likewise marked with suffering. As Bonhoeffer reminded us, “Jesus says that every Christian has his own cross waiting for him, a cross destined and appointed by God.” For us, it may not mean martyrdom as it did for Bonhoeffer, but it will mean aban- doning the attachments of this world for fellowship with Christ. That’s an understanding of discipleship we desperately need today. |
