I recently bought and began reading a huge (and extremely well written) book about Detrich Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas.

Perhaps it's because of my German roots (my maiden name is Eschenbach) but I've always been very interested in what happened in Germany during WWII.

I confess, it's always boggled my mind that so many people could allow such atrocities to take place (essentially in their own backyard) and be so unwillingly to do something about it. What could possibly be attributed to such…inaction.

Additionally, I have also had a keen interest in those few people who did stand against Hitler and his horrific agenda. Those people who somehow were able to recognize that something had to be done, no matter the cost.

People such as Bonhoeffer.

I am only a short way into the book but one of the first things that struck me was actually written in the foreward by author Timothy J. Keller (The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism), when describing the German church during the reign of Hitler.

According to Keller, the two main causes for the lack of reaction (or act of complicity) to Hitler's "final solution" were similar to what we see in our own day: the problem of formalism (put simply…the act of "going to church and hearing that since God loves you and forgives everyone it doesn't matter how you live") and legalism ("God loves you because you have pulled yourself together and are trying to live a good, disciplined life.")

Both of these amount to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer declared "cheap grace". In other words, not realizing that the cost of God's grace was indeed costly (Jesus death on the cross). When clearly understood, the grace and mercy of salvation by faith simply must change the life of the person who receives it.

Understanding the reality of God's grace, living a life changed because of it, is the very reason Dietrich Bonhoeffer was able to stand against the cruelty and utter wrongness of Nazism and Hitler's agenda. He lived a life of extraordinary faith, willing to risk everything for the sake of others when many turned a blind eye, because he truly understood what it meant to be saved by grace.

I've only begun to scratch the surface of this biography, but I can already tell (even from the foreward and early chapters) that I am being challenged to examine my own understanding of grace and what it means to live a life changed by Christ. I know this one thing for certain. I have embraced "cheap grace" in the past, in both formalism and legalism, and now understand why Bonhoeffer spoke against it's complacency.

It's a place I never want to return.