I implore your patience and your attentive ear. Who killed Diedrich Bonhoeffer? When we mention the name Diedrich Bonhoeffer or any 20th century German theologian, we too easily recoil. True, Bonhoeffer studied and generally accepted the works of Karl Barth so that we number Bonhoeffer among the neo-orthodox. But neo-orthodoxy, whatever its faults, more nearly approximates divine truth about God, man, and grace than Arminianism and semi-Pelagianism. Born a German in 1906, Diedrich Bonhoeffer seemed destined to an academic life in the clergy. After seminary tenures at Tübingen, Berlin, and finally in the United States at Union Theological Seminary, where he took his doctorate, Bonhoeffer became a full professor at the tender age of 25. He also pastored in Barcelona, Spain, and in London, England. But as Bonhoeffer arose theologically, Adolf Hitler rose politically. In the late 1930s, Bonhoeffer found himself caught in the political and moral decadence of a Germany that had been literally brainwashed by Nazism. Bonhoeffer became one of the most outspoken opponents of Hitler. Eventually, the Nazis forced Bonhoeffer underground, but he organized two clandestine seminaries in Germany to defy Nazism, and he continued to preach against Nazism's immorality. In 1943, the Nazis arrested and imprisoned Bonhoeffer, moving him frequently from one concentration camp to another. But during his two years of imprisonment, this high-minded, brilliant Barthian came to experience the reality of the humble and lowly Nazarene. Bonhoeffer's prison letters resonate with the simplicity and sincerity of a heart touched by grace. Eventually, in 1945, Bonhoeffer met a tragic death, sentenced to hang upon Nazi gallows. A medical doctor who observed Bonhoeffer's death said of him, quote, he went to the hangman's noose with complete composure, unquote. As I meditated upon Bonhoeffer's death in preparation for this sermon, I asked myself the question, who killed Diedrich Bonhoeffer? The more I thought about the question, the more intrigued I became with what the answer or answers might be. As I visualized Bonhoeffer's limp body hanging lifelessly, I wonder, whose hand wove the rope? Whose hand secured and tightened the rough rope around his ivory neck? Who folded the handkerchief to cover his blue piercing eyes just before he was executed? Who asked Bonhoeffer, do you have any last words? What sawman's sharp blade hewed the wooden gallows on which Bonhoeffer stood? Whose hammer drove the nails to build the gallows? Who gave the order to drop the foot gate? Who pulled the lever? Who took the body down? Who buried Bonhoeffer? Who burned him, perhaps? Who informed Bonhoeffer's friends? Who informed his wife of his execution? Who killed Diedrich Bonhoeffer? A superficial response to this question and questions might be that this or that German did this or that thing to Bonhoeffer. But these questions beg not specific answers, but deeper questions still. Questions such as this, who bent the cross on Himmler's black sleeve? Who embroidered the white skull on Himmler's cap? Who struck lightning on the Luftwaffe's wings? Who polished the goose-stepping German boot? Who mixed the poison in Mingala's vials? Who sharpened Mingala's scalpel? Who grated the fine glass from Mingala's microscope? Who unrolled the razor wire? Who laid the iron rails? Who engineered the steaming boxcar beasts, their bellies full of meat, and their black smokestacks swirling like snakes from the bottomless pit? Who did these things? Who drove the Mercedes trucks loaded with cyanide? Who built the showers? Who dropped the pellets? Who lifted the bony limbs and lowered the limp remains onto the coal-grave wheelbarrows and into the fiery ovens? Why, it was the Gestapo. It was the SS. It was Goering. It was Himmler. It was Eichmann. It was Hitler. It was a passive but mesmerized German populace. They killed Diedrich Bonhoeffer and millions of others. But the answer is not so simple as this. The answer to the question who killed Diedrich Bonhoeffer lies not from the identity of individuals or groups contemporary with Bonhoeffer. But rather the answer lies in recognizing the cultural, moral, and philosophical forces that lay behind the German madness and savagery that created Nazism. To identify these hellish forces of Nazism, we need look no further than Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, and Charles Darwin. Friedrich Nietzsche killed Diedrich Bonhoeffer. The same Nietzsche who declared God is dead also asserted that since God is dead, then the human species have two choices, noble suicide or autocratic self-determinism, what Nietzsche called the will to power. At seminary in 1978, I thumbed through a book, possibly a propaganda book, but nonetheless a powerful book. entitled I am Adolf Hitler and whether or not the contents or not were true. This book had a profound effect upon me as I contemplated the mirror on the front of the book entitled I am Adolf Hitler so that when you looked at the mirror on the book you were looking at yourself. This book reminded us of the horrific potential for evil that lies within every human heart. And this book purported to record Hitler's last words in the Berlin bunker. These specific words from the book have ever since burned in my mind, quote, my will in the marching of every German boot my will at the point of every bayonet, my will in the Blitzkrieg, my will in the Luftwaffe, my will, and I can't finish the quote, unquote. Indeed Hitler has sought to become the great I am, humanistically, politically, and militarily expressed. Hitler memorialized his Nietzschean dream in Leni Riefenstahl's film, The Triumph of the Will, appropriately set to the music of Richard Wagner. As a child, Hitler had been mesmerized by Wagnerian heroes, and though the public is generally aware of Hitler's fascination with Wagner, the public is equally ignorant that Wagner, like Nietzsche, is one of Christianity's greatest foes. In Wagner's writings, he vilifies Christianity and Christianity's God. Wagner denies the deity of Christ and the truth of scripture. Wagner's heroes, therefore, are ultimate expressions of humanism, artistically expressed and, therefore, prototypical Nazis. Wagner's works emphasize an absolutely free humanity. in quest of self-determination and self-fulfillment. How appropriate it must have been, as Russian forces surrounded the city of Berlin in 1945, that the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, in concert as the Russian seas began, were ordered to terminate the concert immediately. And as Germans fled the symphony hall in fear of the Russians, the conductor of the Berlin Orchestra conducted its last piece for the evening, Wagner's Twilight of the Gods. Richard Wagner killed Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Charles Darwin also killed Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Though much more benign and even benevolent in his attitudes towards Christianity than Nietzsche or Wagner, Darwin nonetheless is, of course, an archenemy of the faith. Christians who have a superficial understanding of Darwin are liable to fall into the philosophical error of theistic evolution. The great theologian A.H. Strong and B.B. Warfield committed this error. But they can be forgiven for their error for, at least in Strong's case, they did it ignorantly, though I think Warfield was the best read layperson in the 19th century on the works of Charles Darwin. The process theologian is also a victim of Strong's error. postulating that God is concurrently evolving with the creation towards an eschaton of perfection. The I am is really not the I am, but really the I shall be. And openness theology is a modern and evangelical expression of this. But though the theistic evolutionists may not understand Darwin, usually because he has never read Darwin, the Nazis certainly understood Darwin. Darwin infiltrated Nazism through Heimlich, Himmler, and hundreds of German physicians and scientists. As a young science student, Himmler studied the brilliant German geneticist, Haeckel, who not only embraced Darwinism, but who also recognized the social implications of Darwin's doctrine of the survival of the fittest. Haeckel concluded that the survival of the fittest necessarily demanded that the superior race was destined to rule the inferior races, and therefore articulated not only biological Darwinism, but also social Darwinism, which, through Himmler's influence, crystallized in Hitler's theory of Aryan superiority. In fact, Himmler studied directly under Ernst Haeckel. So the same three-headed monster that enthroned Hitler murdered Bonhoeffer, Nietzsche, Wagner, and Darwin. But are we so naive as not to recognize the underlying philosophical idea that unites Darwin, Wagner, and Nietzsche? That same idea that motivated Hitler and Himmler, the triumph of the human will, The same declaration of the creature's will triumphant also shook the heavens at Lucifer's rebellion, debasing even heaven's brightest cherubim and lowering him into the nether regions of darkest hell with one-third of the shining angels. That same force, the triumph of the will, swayed innocent Adam, moved Cain's hand against Abel, raised the Tower of Babel, and now builds the New World Order. That same force, the triumph of the human will, drove Ahab's bloody chariot and inflamed Jezebel's lust. That same declaration of Nietzsche's philosophy, Wagner's art, and Darwin's science, and Hitler's fury, yet reverberates in the black abyss of hell and the dark chasms of creation. I will. I will. I will. Martin Luther was a theologian of cause. Diedrich Bonhoeffer, a theologian of symptom. But Bonhoeffer's systematic diagnosis of a church made sick by the disease of cheap grace is nonetheless an accurate diagnosis, not only of the German church in Bonhoeffer's day, but the American church in our day. Luther recognized that a major cause of the church's problems lay in its denial of the bondage of the will, the very antithesis of Wagner, Nietzsche, Hitler, and Lucifer. As we contemplate Bonhoeffer's lament of cheap grace, we should remember that Lucifer's I will, Wagner's I will, Darwin's and Nietzsche's I will, is at the root of the evil of cheap grace. Perhaps Bonhoeffer's greatest work is his book, The Cost of Discipleship, and its greatest chapter entitled, Costly Grace. While Bonhoeffer's theological views may not be perfectly compatible with ours, nonetheless his discussion of cheap grace, the antithesis of costly grace, applies profoundly to the prevailing Arminianism and semi-Pelagianism of our day. Bonhoeffer defines cheap grace as, quote, forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the central Christian conception of God, an intellectual assent to the idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins." In other words, parenthesizing, the love of God is the central doctrine, and if you understand the love of God, if you believe the love of God, you're saved. Bonhoeffer says that is cheap grace. To continue the quote, The church which holds the correct doctrine of grace, it is supposed, if so facto, a partaker of that grace. In such a church, the world finds a cheap covering for its sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance. Baptism without church discipline. Absolution without personal confession. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship. Grace without the cross. Grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate." As we consider our theme, grace free but not cheap, who killed Diedrich Bonhoeffer, three corollaries emerged pertinent to Bonhoeffer's concept of cheap grace. First, the theological implications of cheap grace. Secondly, the soteriological or experiential implications of cheap grace. And third, the ecclesiological implications of cheap grace for the Church of God. With regard to the theological implications of cheap grace, I assert first that cheap grace denies the attributes of God's omnipotence and sovereignty, and therefore cheap grace diminishes the praise of the glory of God's grace. In Ephesians chapter 1, Paul's greatest summary, he writes, That God has chose us in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world. That we should be holy and without blame before Him. And that God in love predestinated us unto the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ unto Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace. In this passage, the Apostle Paul asserts that God chooses us, not that we choose God. Listen specifically to Paul's language. According as he has elected us, not as we have elected him. The pronoun he denotes God as the chooser, us as the chosen. But cheap grace argues for a modified interpretation of Paul's language. Cheap grace asserts that Paul does not really mean what he plainly says. Cheap grace says that God chooses Christ only, not those whom Paul describes as in Christ. Now it is true that Christ is the chosen one of God. Isaiah 42.1 God says of Christ that he is, quote, mine elect or my chosen, in whom my soul delighteth, unquote. But God has chosen Christ in a sense unique to the Godhead's purpose in salvation. God has chosen Christ as the federal and covenant head of a corporate body, referred to throughout the New Testament as the elect of God, the sheep, the circumcision, Abraham's true seed, and the Israel of God. In the same way that God has chosen Christ Jesus as His elect from before the foundation of the world, Paul teaches that God has also chosen every member of Christ's mystical body, from the crown of His head to the sole of His feet, like David's physical body in his mother's womb. The elect of God were curiously wrought in the womb of eternal grace. Before the foundation of the world, God covered us in Sarah's, that is, God covered us in grace's womb. Like the members of David's physical body, the members of Christ's spiritual body were intricately, mysteriously, and miraculously woven together. And in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning, the names of all God's children were written in the Lamb's book of life. In due season, each member of the body of Christ is born into the kingdom of God. Not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but born by and of the Spirit of the living God. This miraculous birth ensues from our covenantal union with Christ, and consummates in the bodies growing up into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. But cheap grace aborts the body of Christ, severing the head from the body, and denies the eternal union of Christ with His chosen people. Chief Grace also mistakenly declares that the purposes of God in salvation are determined not in eternity, but in time. That the purposes of God are grounded upon a misinterpretation of the doctrine of foreknowledge, confused with the idea of foresight. Chief Grace postulates that God chooses sinners to salvation because He foresaw they would choose Him. This, of course, makes election mean nothing, nothing at all, nothing but the passive acceptance of God to the inevitable and irresistible action of man. It makes God a passive, inactive deity. Sort of like Star Wars, Jabba the Hutt, who just sits there in greasy grandeur, swallowing everything that comes his way. Election based upon mere foresight creates a God who swallows up human history because it's there to be eaten in front of him. But this is not the biblical idea of God. This is not the biblical idea of election. And we should learn from this illustration that bad doctrine, such as election based on foreseen faith, bad doctrine, leads to a bad vision of God. Yea, wrong doctrine leads to a wrong vision of God. More poignantly stated, A denial of true doctrine is in fact a denial of some divine attribute. And therefore, a denial of true doctrine, a denial of a divine attribute, is therefore a denial of God Himself. No, chief grace stumbles at this point. God does not choose sinners. based upon what he foresees in them. But rather, as Saint Paul has said, God chooses sinners, quote, according to the good pleasure of his will, unquote. First of all, the idea of foreknowledge in the Greek New Testament is not the same thing as foresight. It is a very, very different concept which connotes an intimate relationship between the foreknown and the foreknower. So let us not confuse foresight with foreknowledge. In truth, only a few scriptures, a handful, discuss God's foresight of who or who might not come unto God for salvation. In fact, only four in the Bible. In fact, only two twice repeated. The psalmist, in Psalm 14, 2 and 3, and 53, 2 and 3, considers the event of God's foresight of sinners and says, quote, Yahweh looked down upon the children of men from heaven to see if there were any that did understand, and to see if there were any that did seek God." Then in the next verse, the psalmist tells us what Yahweh foresaw in these sinners. They are all gone back. They are all together become filthy. There is none that doeth good, no, not one." These verses clearly suggest that if it were foresight alone that determined whom God would choose based upon His foresight of their response to Him, that God would have elected no one. Because God foresaw that no one would have elected Him. The Apostle Paul also recognized this unresponsiveness of sinners within the scope of divine foresight. And in his epistle to the Romans, Paul quotes David and says, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way. They all together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, not one." The evidence against the cheap grace argument for foreseeing faith is not merely clear, But it is even disturbing. In Jesus' pronunciation of wrath against the cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, listen, Jesus said, Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. And thou, Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell, for if the mighty works which had been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, they would have remained unto this day." A close reading of Jesus' words demands a very disturbing conclusion. Jesus said that if His word, and if His works had been spoken and performed in the cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom, those cities would have repented and remained unto this day. This tells us that in God's foresight, Tyre would have repented Sidon would have repented and Sodom would have repented if God had chosen to send them His Word and work. Yet in God Almighty's sovereign omnipotence, God ordained that Tyre would not. God ordained that Sidon would not. God ordained that Bethsaida, yea, that Sodom and Gomorrah would not receive His word and works, and therefore God ordained that they would be destroyed. Let those who demand that God be bound by His omniscient foresight consider the words of David and Christ. According to David, God foresaw that sinners left to the devices of their own wills would never come to God for salvation, yet in God's mercy, He chose to save some of them. But in the latter case, God foresaw that if He had chosen to send His Word and work to Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom, they would have repented. Yet God chose to withhold his grace from them. Let the erring proponents of foresight ponder this dark saying of Christ and bow at the feet of the dread sovereign who is able both to save and destroy. Keep grace also denies absolute predestination. Paul tells us in Ephesians 1.11 that God works all things after the counsel of His own will. Advocates of sheep grace love the quote, Romans 8.28, and we know that all things work together for good that love God. But they forget that those who love God and for whom all things work together for good are, quote, the called according to His purpose, unquote. The advocates of cheap grace will not admit that all things work together for good because God is working all things together for the salvation of His chosen people. Nor will they admit that Paul teaches that of God, through God, and to God are all things. God is the source of all things. God is the medium of all things, and God in His glory is the end of all things. Why, the Lord hath made all things for Himself, even the wicked, for the day of evil. As our confession says, God hath from eternity decreed all things whatsoever come to pass. The dull, humble sparrow's wing rises upon the same sovereign wind that moves the flaming cherubim around the throne. The same holy fire that lights the firefly's tail illuminates the blazing stars, brings forth Matzaroth in his season, guides the sons of Arcturus, and binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades. The Almighty God is great in power. He moves Leviathan in the sea, He moves Behemoth upon the earth, and He moves the eagle through the air. God alone is sovereign. He is God and there is none else. He is God and there is none like Him. He declares the end from the beginning. From ancient times, the things that are not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. I have spoken it. I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it. I will also do it. But, cheap grace, protests, that God does not work all things after the counsel of His own will, but rather after the intentions and actions of man's own will. Let's stand together. Our Father, we thank You for Bonhoeffer, and for the testimony of his death and the testimony of his life. Kindle our passions about costly grace that we may buy the truth and sell it not in Christ's name.