In 1937, on the threshold of Nazi Germany s war on the world, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote what turned out to be one of the most influential books of the century, The Cost of Discipleship. In it, he challenged the flabby faith and compromises of German Christians, famously writing, When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die. Now, seventy-three years after the book was first published, Jon Walker writes Costly Grace: A Contemporary View of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship . Walker brings to a new generation the timeless message of Bonhoeffer against the background of today's political upheaval and societal change and what it means to those who claim to follow Christ's teachings. Christianity Today named Bonhoeffer's book one of the ten most influential books of the twentieth century, but although the book still has a loyal readership, it has not been adequately viewed through the eyes of the twenty-first century, until now. In Costly Grace , Walker, who worked with Rick Warren for several years and recently authored Growing with Purpose (Zondervan, 2009), writes a book that will challenge contemporary teachings and lifestyles. Grace is a foundational doctrine for Christians, yet it is one of the most misunderstood. Bonhoeffer watched as many used the doctrine of grace as an excuse to do whatever they wanted, and in response, he wrote his classic work on what it truly means to follow Jesus. We cheapen grace, he declared, when we use it to compromise our behavior or to lower the standards of God s Word. In a modern retelling of this Christian classic, Walker explains what Bonhoeffer meant when he taught that grace is free but will cost us everything. Dietrich Bonheoffer saw the church abandoning Christ in two ways and both are as prevalent today as they were in Bonheoffer's generation. First, Bonhoeffer says the church has reduced the gospel to a set of burdensome rules, the antithesis of the easy yoke we should find in Jesus. We've loaded the gospel down with so many extra-biblical routines and regulations--a real Christian ought to, has to, must do--that it is difficult for anyone to find the real Jesus, let alone make a clear and conscious decision to follow Christ. We proclaim a religion of rules, which appeals to our prideful desire to show God we're good enough for his kingdom. We make our legal lists and that makes us legalists. Essentially, we're teaching people they have to work their way up to God's standard of righteousness, which challenges the very Word of God, who is the crucified and resurrected Jesus. It is a hopeless proposition and God meant it to be so--he wants us to understand that we can't because only Jesus can. When we keep insisting that, through our behaviors and our attitudes, we can match godly standards of righteousness, is it any wonder why the world sees Jesus as insignificant? Second, Bonhoeffer says we've wrapped the gospel in a sense of false hopes, using the doctrine of grace as an excuse for shallow discipleship and a pervasive acceptance of sin in the Body of Christ. Grace is meant to justify the sinner; yet, we use it to justify our sins. In other words, we've taken "I am a sinner saved by grace" and turned it into "I can sin because of grace." Because of this, we've become satisfied with discipleship as mere Bible study, maybe a weekly prayer breakfast, and for the really committed, a handful of rules to follow that make us feel and look particularly pious. In either case--a burdensome religion or a presumptive attitude on grace--we end up practicing a religion far removed from the intimate relationship God wants us to have with Jesus Christ. Jesus brings us grace and truth -- On the surface, both these extremes look a bit like following Jesus, but my friend and long-time spiritual mentor Steve Pettit says they both attempt to do the impossible: the first tries to separate grace from truth and the second tries to separate truth from grace--either way, it only creates a monumental mess where, instead of becoming monuments to God's grace, we become monuments to our own foolish pride. The apostle John tells us that Jesus is full of grace and truth and, now that we have the life of Christ present in our lives, we are full of grace and truth (John 1:14-16). Jesus holds them together in us just as they are held together in him. Pettit says legalists like to dismiss grace while those unrestrained by grace (licentious) want to disregard truth. Since Jesus embodies the unity of God's Word (truth) and God's activity (grace), we're quickly greeted by the spirit of error when we try to process either grace or truth apart from the person of Jesus Christ. On the one hand, when we seek life and freedom by following the rules (laws, principles, truths separate from grace), we easily slip into legalism. How do we know when this has happened? Says Pettit, "Grace will be seen as license; it will sound like heresy." On the other hand, when we seek life an