The Cost of Living Crisis

Recently our eldest child had ‘money week’ at school. She came home boldly declaring she had budgeted for our family and knew just how much Daddy had to earn to pay for all our things.

“Wow Daddy, vicars get paid LOADS!”

“Oh really?”  (cue raised-eyebrow glance between my husband and me).

“You must earn about £170 a week to pay for all our things!”

We still haven’t broken it to her that given her calculations, we’d be respective millionaires in the classroom economy!

We are all painfully aware of the cost-of-living crisis.

As a parent I have become my mother…I find myself speaking about the cost of a Mars bar ‘when I was younger’ and the sad loss of penny sweets and a ’99-er Mr Whippy that genuinely used to cost what their names promised.

The language of cost is common to us as gospel people too though.

In church, we speak of the cost of discipleship, the cost of carrying our cross, the costly call of Christ’s commands to us.

Voices through history, from Augustine to Calvin and of course, Dietrich Bonhoffer, do not shy away from speaking of the demands of Christ’s call on our lives.

However, I wonder whether in our day and age, while we may read of the cost of discipleship in our comfy armchairs or in our theology book groups, there may be a significant gap in how this plays out in our day to day lives. Do we read of the gospel cost of living but live out a woefully cheap form of discipleship. Is there a cost-of-gospel-living crisis in evangelical and reformed churches today?

I wonder whether we have lost sight of the true value and worth of the cost of following Jesus. Whether we approach the cost of the Christian’s call, as we do inflation and the world’s economy.

Do we grumble and groan and long for better, cheaper, a more ‘budget-friendly’, ‘reasonable-living’ gospel? Do we wish we could get more for our buck from the gospel; more change from our giving?

Can’t I have Jesus and … (fill in your own blank). Can’t I serve a little bit in church but also have my own time to do …. Surely Jesus does not really mean come, follow me right here, right now? Surely love your enemies does not include that person? I know forgiveness is good… where possible, but I’ve got to protect my own heart too haven’t I?

The cost of discipleship is first-world problem in many English churches today- a conversation for the privileged, an ‘area of Christian life’ that is subjective, individual and open to your own life context.

And that is just the problem. We have forgotten the cost of discipleship- that it is supposed to cost more than we see we have to give. It is supposed to give us not excess change, but a worth and value, an inheritance that cannot be measured by any earthly monetary value; it is supposed to leave us empty of self, emotion and means.

The cost of following Jesus really does mean what it says. What Christ says.

Come, really does mean, come …. now.

Follow me, really does mean exclusively.

Me.

Him.

Christ.

Christ alone.

The cost of following Jesus though is one that must only be seen within the economy of the kingdom of God.

A cost that is owed but paid for fully, already by Christ’s sufficiency for us.

A cost of insurmountable debt that we could never pay back and yet are never expected too.

A cost that keeps on speaking to us, commanding us, demanding of us.

We don’t like that language, do we? The language of demand and command. We want to present a comfortable, palatable, fluffy, soft image of grace. The language of demand is associated with discomfort, with pain, with effort. Surely not with grace?

But grace compels. Grace makes demands on us. But grace gives all to us and all for us to fulfil the gospel demands.

Christ is all in for us and with us. He didn’t come to save us and leave us, but to bring us into eternal relationship with God. He came for life. Life to be lived and lived to the full.

And so in His commands to us, He gives us all we need to persevere, to fulfil, to keep living in discipleship of Him, following Him, always by grace.

Costly grace

Not cheap grace.

Grace that costs more than conversation, more than notional assent to theology, more than affirmation of our belief in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. That is cheap grace that has no place in the economy of God’s kingdom.

Costly grace confronts us, compels us to submit, to yield and hand over all that we hold and affirm in our minds, and hearts- and give that in loving obedience to live out. Costly grace takes our notional assent to forgiveness and love of our enemies, takes our hand, and gives us the strength, faith, courage to step toward our enemy, to reach out in mercy to those who have sinned against us, as Christ reached out for us.

Costly grace takes our mental belief in justification of sin and enacts that in our lives to justification of the sinner. Costly grace preaches of Christ’s worthiness and sufficiency for all who confess to receive true forgiveness- for specific people, distinct individuals, for us. Cheap grace speaks of generals, of ‘people’, of the justification of sin at the cross and refuses to share, preach and extend the arm of grace to oneself or others trapped in sin.

I wonder if, like me, you’re tempted to approach the gospel of grace as we do our economy. The cost-of-living crisis is just as big an issue in evangelical churches as it is in the world. The costliness of grace may need to be accepted, and the trust of a future, glorious inheritance and unseen reward in eternity be securely hoped for and awaited.

Our gospel truths are not the ends but means. They are vessels and means to the end goal of knowing God in Christ, enjoying God in Christ by the power of the Spirit and living in the fullness of His love and life forevermore.

The cost of living for Christ in this world not only commands the exclusive giving and surrendering of our whole selves and lives, not only compels that on account of the grace and mercy of God towards us in Christ, but ever more graciously will return that to us in a life of perfect, sinless eternity.

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Emily Lucas is married to Ben and together they have three children. She is Tutor for Women and Student Welfare at Union School of Theology where she mentors in Church History and Systematic Theology. Emily is also studying for her doctorate in Puritan Anthropology.

Views expressed in blogs published by the Latimer Trust are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Latimer Trust.