Indeed!

But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?...   Matthew 20:22 (KJV)

He is risen!!  From a Christian perspective this is indeed great news!  If Jesus stayed in the tomb, well – I don’t know what we’d be talking about right now.  If the Jews of Jesus’ time and shortly thereafter became evangelistic after the diaspora, then I suppose we’d be celebrating Passover and looking for the Messiah.  But He did.

Jesus rose from the grave – great, awesome, incredible news!  Jesus rose from the grave – uh, oh boy…what does that mean for me?  Oh I know it means that the debt of sin has been paid.  I realize the justification, sanctification, and …  But I have that feeling that it means even more (or am I looking for additionally?) right here, right now.  I guess I’m considering what it means in my every-single-day life.

I find it hard to believe that Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead just so I could go to church on Sundays, give a bit in the offering plate, sing some songs and maybe even now-and-then do good things for other people, although these certainly seem to be part of the big picture.  But if that is all there is to being a Christian, then I would have to agree with Bonhoeffer when he called that kind of Christianity “cheap grace”.  The kind of grace where my life remains unchanged, I could continue in sin, no worries because ‘He is risen!’

I have no interest in a cheap grace Christianity.  My desire is for Christ to be real, substantive in my life.  It is, in Bonhoeffer’s words once again, a “costly grace”.  For this grace cost Jesus more than I could even begin to express here.  And it is a grace that will cost me…what?  My life?  Maybe that’s what it is – I surrender my life to the will of God.  I haven’t a clue how to do that.  The best I can do is offer it daily, maybe even sometimes moment-to-moment.

I suppose I should be careful what I wish for.  Costly grace.  Drinking from the same cup.  A baptism in which Jesus surely was not referring to water.   But cheap grace is too similar to what my life has always been, and frankly – I don’t want it, it’s hollow, empty, sad.  I don’t know what a costly grace will look like in my life.  I don’t know what the resurrection, His and mine, will do to my life, but I have already been crucified with Christ, now it’ll be interesting to see what my life will be with Christ living in me. 

He is risen!  And so am I!