COSTLY GRACE AND HOLINESS

I presume that all students in Wesleyan Bible colleges and seminaries who are attending theology classes would have a fair understanding of two important holiness catchwords: cheap grace and costly grace. It was Dietrich Bonhoefer who popularized these concepts, defining cheap grace as “the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion with confession, absolution without personal confession” (Cost of Discipleship, p4), in contrast to costly grace as the grace that “calls us to follow Jesus Christ…, compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ” and which “comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart” (CoD, p5). For Wesleyan theologians like me, these important definitions seem to fit well with the “grand deposit” of our tradition, holiness.

Although Bonhoefer is not among our tradition’s theological forefathers, I still wonder whether Wesleyans have fallen prey to the highly moralistic and anthropocentric overtones embedded in Bonhoefer’s understanding of the Christian life. Although Bonhoefer’s intentions are noble, in that he stressed practical Christianity as opposed to the highly rationalistic Christianity espoused by most of his German colleagues, I think he completely missed the point when he understood the costliness of grace in terms of our following and sacrificial bearing of the cross as our Christian response and responsibility. A careful reader of his Cost of Discipleship could not but feel that the emphasis tends to slide toward human activity in response to the costliness of our redemption paid by Christ. I agree with Bonhoefer’s assertion that grace is costly because it demands much from us who are disciples of Jesus Christ. The problem, however, is that he tends to think of these demands in light of moral, ethical and practical terms.

So if I reject a moralistic view of the costliness of grace, what is my alternative? Following T. F. Torrance, I think grace is costly because it costs nothing from us. But it is precisely because it costs nothing that it costs everything! Self-centredness and a false sense of self-sufficiency are characteristics of our fallen human nature. We, as humans, want to take care of our lives. William Henleys’ poem Invictus perfectly encapsulates our egocentricism: “I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul… I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” If grace is “an unmerited or undeserved favour,” then it actually asks nothing from us—but because it asks nothing from us, it also asks to commit our lives to God whole-heatedly, and to completely trust in God. Grace asks us that we abandon ourselves, and consider all our actions as “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). We are accustomed to clinging to our good works and works of service as assurances that we will be graced and blessed, but the gratuity of grace asks us to think of our good works as nothing. Because grace is free, it costs us what is very dear to us: our own self-will, self-assertion and self-conceived capabilities to please God.

Grace is costly, therefore, not because it requires us to labour and work so that we might be holy. Rather, it is costly because it takes away from under our feet the very ground on which we stand, and the free will which we as human beings cherish so dearly becomes exposed as a subtle form of self-will! Because grace costs nothing and it is free, it lays an axe to the root of all our cherished possessions, achievements and amount of good work. Grace disturbs human self-centredness, for in Christ, God accomplished for us what we want to accomplish for ourselves. As such, if taken out of context, Bonhoefer’s statement that “cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves” (p4) hits the bulls eye.

I am not rejecting the biblical imperative for good works in relation to holy living. I am not an antinomian, nor will I ever be. But it seems to me that our doctrine of holiness ironically suffers from the very problem of self-centredness which it addresses once the moralistic aspects are given priority, because then holiness is centred on my performance, my good works, my obedience, and my discipleship instead of a humble self-abandonment to wholly emphasize Christ’s grace, Christ’s love, Christ’s mercy and Christ’s justice. An unchecked emphasis on works on holy living may lead to self-congratulatory spiritual pride grounded in self-accomplishments. Even the call to self-introspection and consecration may lead one to be engrossed with one’s self, and is thus self-centredness. My main contention is that holiness explicated in terms of the self promotes its opposite. Holiness is selflessness, and thus to focus all the lights and camera to the self – no matter how genuinely holy the intention is – is contradictory.

Grace is costly because it requires nothing from us; and because it requires nothing, it costs us everything: the self and all its self-minted coins of good works. Expanding the Reformation cry, could we not say therefore that holiness is [totus/totus] sola gratia and sola Christus?