More than a mere remembrance, Holy Week and Easter offer us a full experience of God’s Costly Grace. On Easter morning, we join with the women, arriving to find an empty tomb, and we ourselves become witnesses to God’s Gift of Costly Grace. For “cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, resurrected and living. The resurrection alone gives the cross its redemptive power.” It is only through the cost of the cross that the resurrection is fully understood, and in response we exclaim with all creation, “Alleluia! He is risen!”
Throughout the season of Lent we have reflected on God’s Costly Grace, guided by the work of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who coined the phrases “costly grace” and “cheap grace.” His writings encourage Christians to live lives of costly discipleship in response to the great cost of Christ’s death on Good Friday. “Above all, this grace is costly because it cost God the life of his Son… and it is grace because it gives us the only true life (Bonhoeffer).
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