Discipleship as surrender to grace – and sacrifice

‘Discipleship Courses’ as a programmatic approach to Christian nurture and catechesis would not have commended themselves to Bonhoeffer, and for deeply theological reasons which are embedded in a theology of grace. Paul, Luther and Kierkegaard all inform Bonhoeffer’s rigorous understanding of discipleship as a costly, self-sacrificing  and life threatening following after Jesus. ‘I am crucified with Christ – I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.’

For Luther too, discipleship is not self conscious training in obedience, however useful and pragmatic that might seem – discipleship is surrender to the grace that invades to the very core of human being. So Bonhoeffer is characteristically uncompromising, ‘With the very first step, the substance of the Gospels requires an action that affects the whole of life’. Kierkegaard’s warning also provides Bonhoeffer with a strong conception of discipleship that is essentially and vitally lived as a theology of grace: ‘Not "disipleship", but "grace" is the place to begin; and then discipleship is to follow as a fruit of gratitude to the best of one’s ability’. And Kierkegaard, that most enigmatic writer skilled in paradox, knew perfectly well that the best of one’s ability is also dependent on the grace that enables.

So for Bonhoeffer grace through faith, and faith as divinely given instrument, makes true discipleship possible. ‘Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient is a believer….Discipleship is a bond with the suffering Christ’ . For Bonhoeffer a programmatic approach to Christian training that uses the term ‘discipleship’ is in danger of trivialising the passion and suffering that gives discipleship its essential Christlike appearance and Christ-centred focus. ‘Whoever wishes to carry in his person the transfigured image of Jesus must already have carried in the world the battered image of the One who was Crucified.’