Learning How to Die

Picture of a vulture I took last week in Calamar

Reading my last entry, some might think that I'm getting kind of soft with all this talk about sensitivity, and teaching a message that can be easily digested in the initial stages of hearing the gospel... Even worse, I kind of focused on aspects of "new birth", and "drinking milk", and "being a baby"; but I fear that along with these concepts, perhaps I was sharing an incomplete gospel, by not talking about death.

Cause see, along with receiving new life, one of the main prerequisites for it, is death itself (Luke 9:23; Galatians 2:20; Colossians 2:20, 3:3;)... but that's usually something we'd rather not talk about. New life is exciting, death is hard. New life is refreshing, death is discouraging. New life is something we anticipate, death is something we dread.

But either way you look at it, death is inevitable. Just like every seed dies before it grows (1 Cor. 15:36), so also, everyone one of us is heading towards death before we are resurrected... in a sense, life is kind of like learning how to die.

And spiritually speaking, death is indispensable. In fact, if anyone wants to be born of the Spirit, that person must necessarily put to death the misdeeds of the body (Romans 8:13). We have to die to ourselves in order to live for Christ. Jesus isn't going to share our allegiance to him with our allegiance to the world or to our flesh... In order for us to truly follow him, all else must die (Matt. 10:38, 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23, 14:27). With Christ it's all or nothing.

Now, what's tricky about all of this is that when we think of salvation, the main concept that comes into play is grace (and rightly so), but as profound theologian and authentic Christian Dietrich Bonhoeffer has said, "The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ" (The Cost of Discipleship p. 55).

...Granted, we are saved exclusively by grace through our belief in Christ (Ephesians 2:8), but the question then becomes: "how can we believe in something we don't obey?" How can we live for God if all the while we are living for ourselves? How can we call Christ "Lord" if we don't do what he says? (Luke 6:46).  

We can't. Just like we can't expect a house that's built on sand to hold up in the middle of a storm (Matt. 7:26)... [because it won't (just like it would be impossible for us to expect to live our lives in Jesus if we never bother to listen to him or put his words into practice)].

See, that type of "diluted salvation" is what Dietrich coined as cheap grace... "Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, (it's) baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate" (p. 47).

But grace isn't cheap! It's the most valuable thing in the world because it cost God his only son so that we could have it (John 3:16)... How dare we depreciate that sacrifice with a morally flippant lifestyle...

See, right after Bonhoeffer describes cheap grace - in diametrical opposition to it, he articulates the wonderful essence of costly grace in the following paragraphs:

"Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

"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.

"Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It 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 for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God" (p.47-48).

...Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood this costly grace so much that he considered it well worthwhile to defend it, even with his very life, against the opposition of perhaps the most powerful villain the world has ever seen, namely Adolf Hitler.

Bonhoeffer was martyred on April 9th, 1945 (click here to read about what happened on that very day 3 years later), but in Dietrich's estimation, his physical death was of seemingly very little importance. Dietrich had already died spiritually in Christ a long time before this instance, and his physical death at the hands of the Third Reich by no means implied the end of his life... rather it was just the entrance into a fuller one.

In the movie clip above, it's interesting to notice Bonhoeffer's peace as he walked, quite literally, into his execution...

...And at the beginning of this post I mentioned my fear of promoting some sort of "easy gospel," but actually the gospel of Christ is quite easy indeed... See, because even though Jesus told us to take up our cross and follow him (Matt. 16: 24), he also promised that his yoke is easy and his burden is light (11:30).

...Even though Dietrich had to pick up his cross to follow Jesus all the way up to the gallows, somehow that yoke of doing so was still quite easy and light.

So, even though I've expounded a little more on the implications concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ than what I did in my last entry; I still conclude with the same encouragement:

Taste and see that the Lord is good! (Psalm 34:8)

...Just keep in mind that the ultimate demonstration of his goodness came at a very costly price, and that to truly taste and see it, you do, in fact, have to accept Christ as Lord.

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Picture Cited:

http://lifeondoverbeach.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/dietrich-bonhoeffer-on-what-marriage-is-for/