Cheap Grace

Don't have much time before worship, but just wanted to share part of what I have been reading. I bought a book by John Piper at Passion 07' called When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight For Joy. I have just got around to reading it this summer and it is blowing my socks off. I have to read every page like 3 times just to even begin to understand his genius writing. I am now STUCK on a particular page because of a Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote that Piper adds in at the bottom of the page. I just can't get over it, and the sadness of how true it really is...

"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....The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ...We...have gathered like eagles round the carcass of cheap grace, and there we have drunk of the poison which has killed the life of following Christ."



Sweet Jesus I pray for forgiveness for the ways that we have minimized you, contained you, tried to restrain you, and kept you from doing your work. I hate that we have even thought about making you anything your not, an at the same time not given you enough credit for ALL that you are. I pray that the world would see and know the true Christ, and not some fabrication of Him, or the version of Him that we have adopted and tried to mold you into to give to others. Reveal yourself to us in a way that makes us change and kills any evidence of cheap grace in our lives. We love you, help us love you more.