The Cost He Already Counted

On April 9, 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was led to the gallows at Flossenbürg concentration camp in Bavaria. He was thirty-nine years old. Just two weeks later, Allied forces would liberate the camp — but Bonhoeffer would not see that day.

Eight years earlier, the German pastor and theologian had written words that proved prophetic. In his 1937 book The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer drew a sharp line between what he called "cheap grace" and "costly grace." Cheap grace, he warned, was grace without discipleship, without the cross. Costly grace, he insisted, is the kind that costs a man his life — and gives him the only true life in return.

Bonhoeffer did not write those words from a safe distance. By 1940, he had joined the Abwehr resistance, secretly working to undermine Hitler's regime from within German military intelligence. He knew the risk. When the conspiracy was uncovered, Bonhoeffer was arrested on April 5, 1943, and spent two years in Nazi prisons before his execution by hanging.

He had written the theology. Then he lived it — and died by it.

Revelation 2:10 calls believers to be faithful unto death and promises the crown of life. Bonhoeffer reminds us that faithfulness is not a theory to admire but a cost to be counted. Most of us will never face a gallows. But every believer faces the daily question Bonhoeffer answered with his life: Is your grace cheap, or costly?