Cost of Being a Real Christian

Popular theology and preaching make a distinction between being "saved" and "discipleship". Such a distinction is foreign to the teaching of our Lord concerning discipleship. The sermon shows from this passage and others that our Lord is not speaking of a cost that is optional or something which may be added once a "free" salvation has been obtained. Biblical discipleship is NOT, as popularly thought, someting for an advanced Christian, but is essential to being a real or genuine Chritian in the first place. Cheap grace does not produce a true disciple. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said strikingly, "Having laid hold on cheap grace, they were barred forever from the knowledge of costly grace...The word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works."