The True Cost of Discipleship

On this day sixty-three years ago, Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged (actually slowly asphyxiated to death) at Flossenburg Prison, a mere three weeks before it was liberated by Allied forces. Bonhoeffer had been imprisoned for his role in the July 20 Plot, the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. Bonhoeffer was caught only when money used to help Jews escape to Switzerland was traced back to the pastor.

Today is a day to remember the cost of discipleship:

Suffering then is the badge of true discipleship. The disciple is not above his master . . . . That is why Luther reckoned suffering among the marks of the true Church . . . . If we refuse to take up our cross and submit to suffering and rejection at the hands of men, we forfeit our fellowship with Christ and have ceased to follow Him. But if we lose our lives in His service and carry out cross, we shall find our lives again in the fellowship of the cross with Christ. The opposite of discipleship is to be ashamed of Christ and His cross and all the offense which the cross brings in its train. — The Cost of Discipleship (1937)