Although they work hard, and they have accomplished a great deal for the Kingdom, they certainly realize that they fizzle out quickly when not depending upon God, and “depending” WITH each other, keeping the gift of forgiveness available to bestow on one another. This reminded of me of several Hauerwas essays, where the miracle of forgiveness is seen as necessary to the whole enterprise; without it, we ultimately seek to control our world, and deny that we are creatures, dependent upon God. This is such a “what was that again?” reply to the “Faith alone” people who lose the balance of the Inward and Outward Journey; of “faith vs works”, of grace and obedience; they have fallen prey to “cheap grace”.

p. 151, Revive Us Again by Jim Wallis (1983, Abingdon)

Those who pursue radical discipleship, however, face another problem. It is the tendency to seek justification in our life-style, our work, our protest, our causes, our movements, our actions, our prophetic identity, and our radical self-image. It becomes an easy temptation to place our security in the things we stand for and in the things we do, instead of in what God has done. It is a temptation to depend on things other than God’s grace.

More on “Cheap Grace” and the power and deception of idols:

As Bonhoeffer reminds us, grace which comes at such a heavy cost to God cannot be used cheaply. Grace is not meant to obscure the path of discipleship and obedience. On the contrary, grace opens that path to us. Cheap grace proclaims salvation without repentance. The evangelism of cheap grace has no real power to challenge either our personal status or the political status quo.

But there is another denial of grace among us. It often rears up in reaction to the cheap grace most prevalent in our churches.

The reaction to cheap grace can be so strong, the emphasis on radical discipleship and obedience so firm, that eventually there is little room left for any grace in our lives. The response to cheap grace can wrongly lead us to the loss of grace altogether. In our reaction against cheap grace, we are always in danger of producing radical alternatives to grace, new forms of works righteousness. In our desire to be obedient to the gospel and to prove our faithfulness, we could lose the freedom and the power that come from resting and fully trusting in God’s grace as sufficient for our lives and for the world.

In the language of the Ephesians passage, radical Christians have things they tend to “boast of.” These are the things that can most easily become idols for us. They are not the idolatries of the established society and the comfortable church. We have identified those and confronted them so often that they have become familiar and easily recognizable. Therefore, their power over us has become diminished.

But there are idols closer to home. We are less able to recognize them and can, therefore, more easily fall into their grasp. In very subtle ways, they are the idolatries that have the most power over us.

Idolatry must be identified and unmasked if it is to lose its power. Illusion is, in fact, the source of an idol’s power. We place our trust in that which is not trustworthy but appears to be. We are deceived by the image of the idol which replaces that which is worthy of our trust.

Not to fully trust God’s grace is to engage in illusion. It is to underestimate the power of sin and death and to overestimate our ability to overcome it. Not to rely on the work of Christ is to rely on our own work to save ourselves and the world. When we don’t trust grace, we take ourselves too seriously, while not taking sin seriously enough.

Not of works, so that anyone could boast, but it is the gift of God
(Eph. 2:8)

But it is not a simple life-style that justifies us. It is, rather, God’s grace that enables us to live more simply. Displaying our style of life as if it were a badge of righteousness contradicts the whole spiritual foundation of economic simplicity. We live simply not out of obligation and guilt but to be less hindered in serving God and the poor. It should not be a duty, but a joy. Our life-style must not be used to judge others, but to invite them to share in the freedom and grace we have found.

With Peaceable communities like Sojourners, I listen to the preaching of grace, since they have lived a story that has made them conscious of what’s at stake, and that “Grace” is not cheap, as it is for so much of lukewarm America (and what of myself; how will I find my way out of this sideline; this inactivity. I sometimes find myself despairing of reading stories of the workings of the Kingdom when I wonder if I will stay in this “from afar” mode and avoid the “getting into the mess and the risk and the “letting go” — I often find myself in that “preparatory” mode; “I’m almost there”, or “I’m expecting to hear that call any day now to something specific. I still have to believe that there will be something significant involving online community as a resource to some crucial advocating, mission, and providing connections to conversation and collaboration enabling us to find each other for various purposes; for just about any kind of mission. Perhaps “Smart Mobs” will be involved (as in Mobile Technology, as Howard Rheiongold writes in the book Smart Mobs and on his blog smartmobs.com