James Osbourn-"The Lawful Captive Delivered"

"But that grace should respect me, and single me out from others, and save my soul, is to be admired and spoken of with feelings of great gratitude: nor can I now well keep from saying, 'Why me, Lord; why me?' By nature there never was anything in me worth grace's notice; and grace might just as well have sought for merit in a nonentity as to have sought for it in me. Grace, therefore, in raising me up from what the Psalmist David calls the 'horrible pit and miry clay,' had to do it at its own expense, for I in no wise could help. And hence, in this respect, salvation came cheap to me, for it cost me nothing. I gained not heaven by toiling nor by spinning; and yet I can say unto my reader, 'that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like my soul.'"(p 12)

Pastor Jamey's Comment---Cheap grace! James Osbourn was describing the riches of God's grace in lavishing and bestowing unmerited favor upon him apart from anything good within him. But James Osbourn recognized that grace was costly in that God raised him from the pit at His (God's) own expense. Grace is free in that we do not earn it but grace came by Christ Jesus' pain and death!

However, a century later Dietrich Bonhoeffer used the expression "cheap grace" to describe salvation received that called for no self denial in the one who received grace. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister in Germany during Hitler's regime and operated an underground seminary. He eventually was executed for his faith. He wrote: "cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ."

The context of Osbourn's quote was affirming the free nature of grace (free grace is like describing water as being wet) received, separate and apart from any decision or activity in the sinner. Bonhoeffer was refuting the idea of his day that salvation made no change or demand in the recipient of grace. Both ideas of "cheap grace" are true. Grace is received freely, and the assurance that grace is received is expressed through obedience. "And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (Matthew 10:38, 39).