Picture a man at work who tells everyone he is saved. He drinks heavily most weekends, moves from one girlfriend to the next and laughs it off as sowing his wild oats. Whenever someone gently points out the contradiction, he answers cheerfully, “I’m saved. I’m under grace.”
The phrase “cheap grace” was made famous by a twentieth-century German pastor, but the problem it describes is much older. Paul faced it in his letter to the believers in Rome:
“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” (Romans 6:1-2, NKJV)
Paul’s answer to grace treated as a blank cheque is one of the strongest rejections in all his letters. His letter to Titus describes what grace is meant to do instead:
“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age.” (Titus 2:11-12, NKJV)
Grace teaches. Cheap grace accepts the gift and ignores the teaching that comes with it.
Jesus Asked People to Count the Cost
Jesus did not want anyone following Him on a misunderstanding. He told the crowds plainly what discipleship would ask of them:
“For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it?… So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.” (Luke 14:28, 33, NKJV)
He also told a short parable that shows how a person who understands the value of the kingdom feels about that cost:
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” (Matthew 13:45-46, NKJV)
The merchant did not resent the price. He knew what the pearl was worth, and he sold everything else gladly.
An Offering That Cost David Something
When a plague struck Israel, David went to buy Araunah’s threshing floor to build an altar. Araunah offered him the land and the oxen for nothing. David refused:
“Then the king said to Araunah, ‘No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price; nor will I offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God with that which costs me nothing.’ So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.” (2 Samuel 24:24, NKJV)
Worship and repentance that cost us nothing are little more than gestures. Cheap grace turns David’s principle upside down: it receives God’s costly gift and gives nothing of ourselves in return.
Free to Us, Costly to God
Grace is free to receive, and Ephesians 2:8-9 makes that clear. But free to us has never meant cheap. Peter reminds us what it cost:
“Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold… but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” (1 Peter 1:18-19, NKJV)
Paul puts the cost where it belongs: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, NKJV). Grace costs us nothing to receive, and it cost God His Son. Cheap grace remembers only the first part of that.
Telling the Real Stone From the Copy
A glass imitation can be cut and polished to sparkle like a diamond under shop lights. A jeweller can still tell them apart, because a real diamond is hard enough to scratch glass and conducts heat so well that it feels cold to the touch. The difference comes from how each was formed, and it shows when the stone is tested. Cheap grace and costly grace can look alike from a distance in the same way, until real pressure comes.
The Question That Changed Him
Back to the man at work. A friend who had watched him for years finally asked, “If grace never asked anything different of you, what do you think it cost Christ to give it?” The question stayed with him for months. Slowly he stopped treating grace as a loophole and began to see it as a gift bought at a terrible price. Like David, he found that faith which costs nothing is hardly faith at all. For him, the cost became a life lived deliberately for God, denying himself and submitting to God’s word.
Ask yourself honestly whether grace has taught you anything lately, and whether you have offered God something this week that cost you nothing. Then thank Him for what your salvation cost Him, and let that gratitude shape how you live tomorrow.
