"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks' wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church's inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing."
-- Diettrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
Grace is like an all-inclusive resort with an all-you-can-eat buffet and an open bar. One way to shirk the generosity of your admittance is to be stingy, to refuse to enjoy the great lengths that your host has gone to in favor of your preferred shrewdness. The other way to abuse to this generosity is by taking 12 fried chicken legs, eating the skin and tossing the rest; piling slices of watermelon on your plate, taking a bite out of each and tossing the rest; taking 8 shots of whiskey because it's on the house and throwing up most of them in a drunken stupor later.
The first way treats grace as insufficient and makes grace more costly than it already is by attempting to add your payment to that which it already cost your host. The latter way treats grace as unimportant and makes grace so cheap that no thought is given to the costs of the host. The first refuses to accept anything for free and the latter refuses to consider how much it costs someone else to offer you freely.
Grace is free because someone else paid the bill.
John 19:30
When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished"
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