Josh Benner

Tag: cheap grace

  • Costly grace vs cheap grace

    Costly grace vs cheap grace

    In John 14:16-17, Jesus is foretelling his death. He promises another helper in referring to the coming of the Holy Spirit. In John 14:18-21, Jesus promises that he himself will also return. 

    John 14:18: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

    When Jesus says I will not leave you as orphans, that seems to have a double meaning. The disciples will not be orphans both because they will be given the Spirit of truth who will be the helper with them forever. And they will not be orphans because Christ himself will return. And at the end of the verse, he says: I will come to you. 

    Scholars have interpreted that last part of the verse in different ways. But the best evidence is that Jesus is talking about the resurrection. That on the night before he was to go to the cross, Jesus was promising his disciples that he would come back. 

    Given what will follow, I believe that is what makes the most sense because Jesus will start talking to the disciples about what is revealed and what the world is blind to, both in light of the resurrection. 

    There is an immediacy to Christ’s coming back which I think fits better with the resurrection appearances. 

    John 14:19: Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 

    Here, Jesus is clearly talking about the circumstances of his death and resurrection. When he says the world will see me no more, it’s referring to the sinful and fallen humanity. Those who are not of God and who are not his disciples. And on the eve of his death on the cross, it is true that the world will not see him again. 

    His resurrection appearances will be exclusively to those who are his disciples or to those who will become his disciples, such as when he appears to Saul. And while the world will not see him again, the disciples will see the risen Lord. This will be covered in chapters 20 and 21 of this gospel. 

    And not only will the disciples see Jesus, they will have life because of Jesus. 

    Because I live, you also will live. 

    Life in Christ has been talked about all throughout this gospel. 

    In John 11, when Jesus’ friend Lazarus had died, Jesus had proclaimed:

    “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” 

    The Gospel 

    Again, the world loves to create its own gospel. It loves to undermine the truth. It loves to tell you there are other ways. It loves to tell you that you can make your own way. 

    But the Gospel of John is continually confronting us with the fact that it is Christ and Christ alone who is the way to life and who is the giver of true life. That there is one gospel and this is it. That Jesus would go to the cross and die for the sins of the world. 

    John 14:20: In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

    In the day that Jesus is raised from the dead. On the first Easter, you will know. When you encounter Jesus, you will know. And we too are invited to know the risen Lord. To know that he died, and rose, and lives forever and that life is found in him. We are invited to know him and live in the truth of who he is and what he has done through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

    John 14:21: Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”

    It’s noteworthy that Jesus is mentioning obedience to his commands for the second time. When he says whoever has my commandments and keeps them, the point is that it’s not just knowing his commands. It’s also about following….Him. 

    Grace and Law 

    There is this complicated balance within churches of grace and law. Too many churches go too far to one extreme or the other. 

    If you go too far to the extreme of law, you have a church that’s very legalistic and self-righteous. The danger of that is that you can start to withdraw your faith from Jesus and ultimately start to put your faith in yourself. Your goodness, your righteousness. 

    And when you do that, you’ve missed the whole point. 

    You can follow a bunch of rules and not even believe in the gospel at all. Following all the rules is worthless without faith because you’ll never be good enough. 

    But on the other side of the coin, you have churches that go too far to the grace where we lose sight of the commands of Christ and accountability, and repentance 

    The danger of this is that we can start treating grace like it’s a license to sin. 

    God is loving. So it doesn’t ultimately matter what you do because he’s a loving God who loves to love people. 

    This devolves into what Dietrich Bonhoffer called “cheap grace.” 

    And what that means is that it cheapens the gospel, it cheapens what Christ has actually called us to. 

    Quoting from the Cost of Discipleship. I’ve read this before but it’s a classic. 

    Cheap grace 

    “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, 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.

    Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will 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.” 

    What we need is balance between the two. Now it’s interesting in our passage. 

    And I think the key to balancing all of that is right in our passage. Let’s look again. 

    Jesus says: you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” 

    Jesus speaks of his unity with the Father. He’s said similar things elsewhere in this gospel. 

    But what’s unique to this passage is that Jesus also adds and you in me, and I in you. 

    That we will be in Christ. That when we have faith in the gospel, we are united with Christ. That’s not to say that we are Christ, or are somehow deified. 

    But we are forgiven in Christ. We are loved in Christ.We have union in Christ.  

    Jesus and the Father have perfect unity with each other. And we have a share of that when we are in Christ. Now we are still human and still sinful so it is not yet the perfected union that it will be. But we are in Christ and Christ is in us through the Spirit. 

    And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” 

    That to love Jesus is to be loved by God. Because Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is the one whom God sent. Jesus is the one who goes to God on our behalf. Jesus is the one who sits at the right hand of God. 

    Again, John’s Gospel does not give wiggle room. Jesus is not just a great teacher. 

    He is the way, the truth, and the life, and he is the one who gives us the privilege of being loved by God. 

    And Jesus says he will love us and manifest himself to us. 

    That we will have a greater and greater sense of the truth and love that are in Christ, as a result of having the Spirit, as we live for Christ and walk with Christ. 

    And that is why our lives matter and what we do matter. 

    Because our lives are not our own. When we truly know Jesus, when we truly love Jesus, that Jesus changes us from the inside out. True faith creates a new person who can never again be the same. 

    And the world does not understand that message. 

    The world thinks Christianity is just a guy telling people to be good, and mocking that idea because anyone should be able to figure that out on their own. 

    Christianity is living a new Spiritual life in Christ to the glory of God. 

    And because we’re still finite people living in a fallen world, we will do that imperfectly, and the good news is that there is grace and forgiveness when we fail. 

    But the costly grace of the gospel is that Jesus calls us to live for he who paid the ultimate price for our forgiveness. 

    And that’s either beautiful to you or detestable. 

    It’s either the wisdom of God or it’s an absurdity. 

    But what is it to you? Is it the bedrock on which to build your life? And is it shaping who you are?

  • Christian comedian break silence 8 months after sexual misconduct scandal

    Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    After an eight month hiatus from the public eye, popular millennial Christian comedian broke his silence through social media on Wednesday. Last November, Charisma News broke a story detailing numerous allegations of sexual misconduct carried out by Crist.

    Before the sexual misconduct scandal, Crist had amassed millions of followers online, had a popular standup tour, was a few weeks ago from the release of a Netflix comedy special. He had become a social media sensation among evangelical millennials for poking fun at the Christian subculture.

    Crist notes the overwhelming support he’s received from fans.

    With a scandal of personal sin, I feel like there are two primaries camps where Christians find themselves. And I think that this is interesting, not just because of Crist, but because it’s a microcosm of how we view sin. 

    On the one hand, you have the cheap grace crowd. When this scandal first came to light, I remember seeing posts online which totally overlooked the severity of what Crist had done and said things like “no one is perfect,” “well all make mistakes,” “Christians aren’t supposed to judge,” “I guess you must be perfect.” 

    For this group, there’s no real need for repentance or transformation. Christians often get painted as being too judgmental and critical. I actually think a larger issue in Christendom is that we’re often too dismissive of sin and quick to excuse it away under the guise of grace. 

    But that overlooks the victims. Crist was a predator who used his fame to exploit women. That’s a truly terrible thing for a person to do. I’m not suggesting that Crist is irredeemable. That’s the good news of the gospel. No matter what a person does, no matter what sin a person commits, there can be grace through Christ and what he has done. But we can’t mitigate sin itself.

    When Crist’s misconduct came to light last November, he said at the time:

    “While I am not guilty of everything I’ve been accused of, I confess to being guilty of this—I have treated relationships with women far too casually, in some cases even recklessly. My behavior has been destructive and sinful. I’ve sinned against God, against women and the people who I love the most. I have violated my own Christian beliefs, convictions and values, and have hurt many people in the process. I am sorry for the hurt and pain I have caused these women and will continue to seek their forgiveness. I have also hurt the name of Jesus and have sought His forgiveness. Over several recent years, I have privately sought and received regular professional treatment for my sexual sin and addiction struggles.”

    Another camp that people can fall into is being cynical. Not believing that he’s truly repented and that he’s working to change. This view is also dangerous. All are sinful and need to repent and to turn to Christ.

    The reason why it’s easy to be cynical is that people so often let us down and fall. It’s easy to be cynical because much of our society is cynical. We paint in broad brush strokes. We judge people from the past based on the values of today. If a person commits a sin in the eyes of the popular culture, the mob comes after them. It seeks to bring punishment instead of forgiveness. The mob seeks to punish, to tear people down, to assume the worst. Christians can be tempted to fall into this too.

    I think that the appropriate response is in the middle. Yes, there is grace and we should rejoice in that. But talk is cheap. True repentance and true faith bear fruit. So I think we should take a person at their word when they apologize and seek help and seek to change. But we should also expect to see the fruit of that in their life.

    To specifically critique today’s statement from Crist, I wish he would have more specifically called his actions “sin,” and talked about repentance and dependence on his faith. In many ways, I think his initial statement was better than what he said in his video. I also would have liked to have seen him specifically apologize for what he did instead of vaguely referring to “a lot of poor choices in my personal life” which “hurt myself, that hurt other people, and embarrassed myself.”

    Crist goes on to say “the most embarrassing part of this whole thing is the biggest hypocrite was me.” I can think of more embarrassing aspects of this scandal.

    I’ve been a fan of Crist for a few years. One of the first dates my wife and I went on after getting married was seeing hi perform stand up. It’s truly my hope that he has changed.

    Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to like and subscribe!

  • Bachelorette talks about faith and premarital sex


    ABC reality show the Bachelorette is in the news regarding a confrontation from bachelorette Hannah Brown and contestant Luke Parker. Brown is a professing Christian and Parker is a born again Christian. The subject of sex outside of marriage came up in a conversation. Parker said “let’s say you have had sex with one – or multiple – of these guys, I would be wanting to go home.”

    Brown says “I’ve had sex and Jesus still loves me.” Certainly Jesus is infinitely gracious. But we also should not take a casual attitude towards sin. Brown has received criticism from many Christians this week. I think her attitude is one that has become too common among professing Christians. We take anyone pointing us to Christians teachings as them judging us. And we treat “thou shalt not judge” as the first and only commandment that matters in the 21st century. (more…)

  • The worst of sinners

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    In a letter to his protege Timothy, the Apostle Paul calls himself the worst (1 Timothy 1:15).

    I think we all need to look at ourselves as among the worst of sinners, because all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). All of us have lied, have cheated, have harbored anger, have held ill will towards others, have acted selfishly, have manipulated. We sin.

    Our society likes to undermine sin, and call it freedom. We like to deny sin and blame other factors such as society and upbringing. We like to undermine the culpability for addictions and call them diseases.

    But we regularly, freely, reject to carry out the will of God.

    The higher the view we have of sin and of the cost of our sin, the greater the appreciation we can have for the grace of God. Because in the gospel, in spite of our sin and imperfection, we see Jesus dying so that we could be redeemed. We have a savior who died to save the worst of sinners. And on that cross, he shows that sin is costly. The cross makes no sense otherwise. Jesus died to make the ungodly, Godly.

    May we rejoice in that.

    Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think, and don’t forget to subscribe! 

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

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  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer: cheap grace vs. costly grace

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    Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian. He was staunchly opposed to the Nazis. Arrested in 1943, he was later implicated in being a conspirator in an assassination plot against Hitler. Bonhoffer was executed in 1945.

    His writings have been influential in the 73 years since his death. Bonhoffer’s “The Cost of Discipleship” is a book that examined what it means to truly be a follower of Christ.

    One of the ideas I really love from this book is what Bonhoffer calls “cheap grace” compared to “costly grace.” Cheap grace essentially takes sin lightly. If sin is taken lightly, then the salvation which Jesus purchased is also cheap. Costly grace comes from a realization of how great our sin was, and how great the gospel is.

    I consider this idea to be Bonhoffer’s greatest contribution to Christian thought.

    Here’s an excerpt from the book:

    “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, 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.

    Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will 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.”

    The gospel makes much of sin. Because Jesus died to redeem us from our sins, to pay the penalty for our sins. And the more we can appreciate sin, the more we can appreciate grace. The more we can appreciate the gospel and what Jesus died. Because he didn’t die a horrific death on the cross to show us that sin didn’t matter. We see the cost of sin at the cross.”


    Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think, and don’t forget to subscribe, share, and comment! 

    Josh Benner is the pastor of Christian Bible Church in Cissna Park, Illinois. He has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He has an awesome wife named Kari.