It Cost Something

Matt 7:15–21

8th in Trinity

July 23, 1961

It Costs Something

One of the great Lutheran doctrines that we pride ourselves on is faith alone. By this we mean that a man is justified, is made right with God, is saved by faith alone. By this we mean that you can't work your way to Heaven. By this we mean that our salvation depends wholly on the work of Christ and you can only be saved by having faith in Christ.

We are proud of being Lutherans and we are happy that Martin Luther rediscovered the doctrine of faith alone. And we are happy that Martin Luther stood before the Church of (Rome~~) ~~ and risked his life on the doctrine of faith alone.

But then there is also a danger in all of this which has been called by one of the leading theologians of our day "Cheap Grace." The man that wrote about "Cheap Grace" was a Lutheran pastor in Germany—Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was a pastor who was put to death by the Nazis shortly before the allies reached his prison.

This is what Bonhoeffer says about "Cheap Grace": "Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack's wares.

danger - faith alone

What Bonhoeffer is getting at here in cheap grace is the type of Christianity which thinks there is nothing much to being a Christian. "You're saved by faith so don't worry about what you do. Go ahead and lead the same life you lived before you were a Christian. Go to church on Sunday morning, drop a little change in the offering and that's all there is to it." This is the type of Christianity that Bonhoeffer reacts to.

Bonhoeffer is writing about what I say can be a danger in our doctrine of "faith alone" because we Lutherans sometimes are tempted to feel because Christ has paid the cost and we are justified by faith alone, we, therefore, don't need to do works, we don't need to witness, we don't need to sacrifice for Christ, this type of Christianity Bonhoeffer calls cheap grace.

And Jesus Christ also had something to say about the type of Christianity which feels that it doesn't cost anything to be a Christian and we read of this in our text for today. "You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? So, every, but sound tree bears good fruit, and the bad tree bears evil fruit.0

In other words, Christ is saying, what you are will show. If you are a Christian it will show, good fruits will come of your Christian life. Christ would have been a deadly enemy, I am sure, of the present-day attitude of cheap grace. True Christ offered his blood so we could be saved "by grace, by faith." But Christ demanded something of his disciples. He expected them to be leave all and follow him—if that was his will. And Christ expects the same today.

What our text then is saying is that saying is that your life will reveal what you are. If you have met Jesus Christ, if you have accepted him, if you are a Christian, it will show. "Grapes aren't gathered from thorns." Apples don't come from elm trees. Pears don't come from oak trees. You don't get oats if all you do is seed a field with weeds. You don't get corn from a field of weeds.

By what you do you reveal what you are. If you are a builder of houses, men may come to you and want work and say they are experienced carpenters, but you only need to watch a man work on a job a few hours and you will soon know whether or not he knows his  job. I once worked for an expert baker. He had studied baking under an apprenticeship in Germany for 8 years. I was just working after school, washing pots and pans, frosting rolls and so on for him and we were talking. I was asking him about baking and bakers. And this is what he told me: A man doesn't have to tell me how good a baker he is. He only needs to work with me for a few hours, and I can tell what he knows. And the same is true with farming. A man doesn't have to work with you too long before you can tell if he knows anything about farming.

This is the thing; we reveal what we are by what we do. By the type of life we lead we reveal whether we are thorns or grapes, we reveal whether we are Christians or non-Christians. Now I want to add a word of caution here. Not as Christians can near get in the position where we begin to judge others. But I am speaking to each person as an individual and saying you know your life—

Faith alone, this is the cry of the reformation, the teaching of the Lutheran Church. But let's remember faith alone doesn't absolve us from work. A good tree is meant to bear good fruit, not Martin Luther, writing on this same subject "Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works; evil does works do not make a wicked man, but a wicked man does evil works." Again, Luther writes, "We conclude, therefore, that a Christian man lives not in himself, but in Christ and his neighbor. Otherwise, he is not a Christian. A person whose faith is barren and not followed by works of love does not truly believe."

Then you see, even Martin Luther, the great champion of "faith alone" also holds to an automatic happening that if we have faith, good works will follow. If we have faith, good fruit will follow.

"Cheap grace" this seems to be the philosophy of our day and especially still seems to be a special danger in our Lutheran Church. You are baptized, you are confirmed, you go to church on Sunday and that's it. Going to church is the thing to do, even though you may not feel like it, Christ has paid the cost, so and we're all in it together, we're all on the same team. Well, I can go on and on, but you know what I am getting at. This whole business of watered-down Christianity so that we water it down to the lowest common denominator. The church doors are open, so everybody comes, just sign your name on the dotted line and that's all there is to it. We as a church sometimes want to put God in a nice cellophane package with a pretty ribbon on it and say: "Here is God, here is the church, see what a pretty package and there's nothing to getting this, just sign your name on the line. We in the church often are tempted to make God as one writer describes "an American jolly Goodfellow." The writer further states concerning people's idea of God: "God is a friendly fellow neighbor who dwells in the apartment just above, and fellowship with the Lord is an extra emotional jag that keeps him (the citizen) happy. The 'gospel' makes him feel real good."

You can hear this same cry from religious authors from many quarters. Elton Trueblood—a leading theologian writer— "For millions our religion involves neither urgency nor excitement, for it is difficult to be urgent about the obvious and the secure. Our popular religion has become both lukewarm and well mannered, meets the favored, admired nor hated by those outside it, and not fiercely defended by those on the inside.

Well, you see what I am getting at. This whole business of watering down our faith. Of making it lukewarm, insipid, toothless and powerless. And you know what happens to things that are watered down too far. Take a quart milk and add a quart of lukewarm insipid water and see how well you like it. Take a bottle of or drink a cup of good coffee and add a cup or to 2 of lukewarm insipid water and see how good the coffee is. Dilute anything too much and it loses its power, its punch and its good taste, and this is the same with the Church and the Christian life.

Cheap grace, this is the enemy of our Church and our Christian lives. We can water our Christianity down so much that it soon is no Christianity but a harmless set of goody little rules that anybody can follow.

But this is not the way of the Gospel, the way of Christ. Christ says sound trees bear fruit, and the tree that doesn't bear fruit is cut down. And Now let's face it, what would be the sense of becoming Christians, of Christ having died if we are to go on in the same old way. If we can continue to sin away, to try to get by at every turn, to just go to church on Sunday and let it go the rest of the week. Now let's face it, we all know this isn't the Christian life. We all know that to truly be a Christian means something. Being a Christian is like joining the army. You know you can join many clubs and nothing much will be asked of you. But join the army and your whole life will change. The army will tell you when to get up. When to go to bed, what to eat, what clothes to wear and everything else. It might be 3 in the morning, and the sergeant tells you to "Hit the deck." You then don't just turn over and yawn, you get up and right then. In the Army you conform to Army habits, not civilian habits.

And Christians are to conform to what Christ expects of them, and not the non-Christian way of life. Christians are to be sound trees that bear good fruit.

And what is the fruit of the Christian life. Paul in Romans 5:22 lists some of the fruit. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. You get the idea, the fruit that Christ expects of Christians is to live in the image of Christ, to try to be like Peter and Paul and all Christians do try to grow in the image and the spirit of Christ. To witness, to pray, to get excited and about the wrongs in the world. Cheap grace—God deliver us from cheap grace. God deliver us from the type of Christianity that thinks nothing much is expected of Christians. True Christ paid for our salvation. But once he has saved us, he expects us to be good sound trees, good sound Christians that bear fruit.

But then we have to add a word of caution here. You may say, yes, but pastor I feel that I am a Christian, but I don't know of much fruit that I bear. Here we have to remind ourselves of something about fruit trees. There are different types of fruit trees. Some bear much fruit, and some little fruit, and some no fruit.

Now, what keeps makes a tree bear good fruit. What makes a field bear well? There has to be proper care and nutrition. A fruit tree has to be pruned; it has to have water. If a tree is neglected, if it gets no running rain, if it is chopped up with knife marks, it will bear little fruit and after a while it will die. If a field is neglected, if the same crop is planted year after year. If no fertilizers are added, if no drain cover, sooner or later a field will not produce.

It's the same with our Christian lives. We can be good trees to start with, we can be baptized, we can be confirmed, we can believe in Christ and follow him and bear spiritual fruit. But then if after a while we get into the habit of never praying, of never reading our Bibles, of seldom associating with Christians, of missing Church most of the time, of never thinking about Christ. If we follow this pattern, sooner or later our spiritual field may go dry. We may produce no fruit. We may in the words of my text become dead trees that bear no fruit and then be set to cut down. You have to feed the body to grow, you have to feed a field to keep it producing, and our spiritual lives have to be fed to keep them alive.

Sometimes I wish I could soften the words of our Bible. Jesus seemed to lay it so squarely on the line at times, and I sometimes wish he had been a little gentle, and said—well just, not too much is required of a Christian. But he didn't. He says sound trees bear good fruit. He expects something of us. But if we're going to yield the fruit that he expects, we're going to have to get spiritual food each day—let's remember that.

(The following section has vertical lines and margin notes, indicating a skipped/reworked draft section)

> God doesn't ask anything superhuman

> of us, He simply asks that to

> Cheap grace, this is a dangerous lurking enemy that plagues our Church—a watered down, lifeless religion. This is the danger of the day.

But may we ever be aware of the dangers that confront us and the Church, and may we ever be diligent to proclaim and live the true Gospel. The common revelation shook troops and then disciple, and may it be said of our Church that we have our shock (Note written vertically in left margin: Trooper, real disciple of Christ)