God has been often pushed to the borders, a 'Deus ex machina', or a God who is called upon in times of stress and need, but who does not play a significant role in the ordinary daily life of most people. Our age of technology, scientific advances, and reasoning has provided the answers and solutions for many problems which were the province of the church in earlier times. That view of the world continued and strengthened a train of thought from one of his earlier, pre-war books, Cost of Discipleship. Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.
Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like the cheapjack's wares.
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Bonhoeffer's last recorded words were spoken when he was called by the Gestapo guards to be taken to the Flossenburg Concentration Camp to be hanged.