"Cheap Grace or Free Grace?"

“I don’t know why every time someone starts talking about the gospel, some detractor yells, “Cheap grace! Cheap grace!” Listen, if it weren’t cheap, you and I couldn’t afford it. If it cost us one thing – our commitment, our obedience, our religious actions, or anything else – it would remain in the store and on the shelf.

“God granted us his grace because of the cross of Christ. It was a gift, given to us with a card attached, the message written in the blood of God’s own Son. If is a gift that makes us righteous – and it has not come cheap. Nevertheless, it must be “cheap” to us – free, actually – or it would never be ours.

“My friend Charlie Jones ... reminded me once, when I was teaching on grace, of the time people asked Martin Luther about works of penance – works that naturally flow from genuine faith and trust in Christ. Luther replied that he supposed that was OK, but then questioned what kind of arrogance would make Christians think that anything they could do would ever be more sufficient than “the blood of God’s own Son.”

“What kind, indeed?”

Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom, p. 87