Two weeks ago, as I walked through my neighborhood after returning from the El Molo Expedition, my neighbor posed a question that stopped me in my tracks. We had been discussing my recent ministry trip to some of the most remote corners of Northern Kenya, and his curiosity was genuine: “What’s your driving force for going to do the things you do to spread the Gospel?”
He shared that he came from a religious background himself, and then offered several possibilities: Was it adventure and wanderlust? The inherent satisfaction of bringing “good” to communities? Or perhaps just the notion that sharing the good news is simply “really important”?
I paused, weighing his thoughtful question. After a moment, I responded: “For me, the fundamental reason I go and tell others about Jesus is because He has so profoundly changed my own life that I can’t help but want to tell others what He has done for me—and thus what is readily available for them to experience as well.”
That conversation crystallized something I’ve been wrestling with since November 9, 2021—the day God reached down from heaven and challenged me to repent of my selfish pride, reshaping my identity from being rooted in myself to being anchored in Him. It was the day cheap grace became costly grace in my life, and everything changed.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from Nazi Germany, warned the church about what he called “cheap grace”—grace without discipleship, forgiveness without transformation, absolution without genuine repentance. Cheap grace, he argued, is grace that costs us nothing and thus ignores the tremendous cost of the Son of God shedding His blood and dying for us.
When we approach the Great Commission from a place of cheap grace, we put “hands before heart.” We serve from cultural compulsion rather than Holy Spirit conviction. We participate half-heartedly in Acts 1:8—going to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth—because we know it’s the “right thing to do,” not because we’ve been transformed by the reality of what Christ accomplished for us.
This kind of ministry flows from perceived obligation rather than overwhelming gratitude. It’s dutiful rather than joyful, manufactured rather than authentic. And while God will still work through our half-hearted efforts, there is something profoundly different between cultural compulsion and Holy Spirit-led driving.
Costly grace, on the other hand, is grace that cost God everything—His Son’s blood poured out on Calvary. When we truly grasp what was sacrificed for our salvation, when we understand the depth of our need and the height of His love, it fundamentally changes how we engage the world.
This is the grace that transformed Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road. His encounter with the risen Christ was so profound, so life-altering, that he couldn’t help but declare: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!” Paul’s “woe” wasn’t a burden—it was the overflow of a heart that had been captured by costly grace.
My own Damascus road moment came on November 9, 2021, at the junction from the main road to L’Moti. That was the day I met Peter LeKombe, but more importantly, it was the day God challenged me to surrender my identity completely to Him. The transformation wasn’t just spiritual—it was total. Because Jesus had shown a sinner such as me such grace and given me a second chance, I found myself unable to contain the good news.
After that experience, I could say in complete confidence that I finally understood what Paul meant. The compulsion to share the Gospel wasn’t duty—it was delight. It wasn’t obligation—it was overflow.
Jesus’ final commission to His disciples—”You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”—was never meant to be a geographic checklist or a cultural expectation. It was the natural progression of hearts transformed by costly grace.
But here’s the crucial point: if we are doing missions without first embracing the new creation we have been made into through Christ’s work, we’re operating from cheap grace. We’re going through the motions without experiencing the transformation. We’re serving from a sense of religious duty rather than from the deep well of gratitude that comes from knowing we’ve been rescued, redeemed, and made new.
Any of us who profess to believe in the Gospel and want to be part of the Great Commission must first be able to fully embrace the cost of discipleship in our own lives. We must fully embrace the change that we have been afforded through Jesus Christ working in us. When we truly understand what costly grace means—what it cost the Father to send His Son, what it cost the Son to die for us, what it cost the Spirit to regenerate our hearts—then our response becomes as natural as breathing.
There’s a world of difference between serving because “good Christians do missions” and serving because Christ’s love compels us. The first flows from cultural expectation; the second flows from heart transformation.
I’ve witnessed this difference in my own life and ministry. Before November 9, 2021, my service was dutiful but not deeply rooted. I served because I knew it was important, because I wanted to do good, perhaps even because I enjoyed the adventure. But after encountering the costly grace of Christ in that transformational moment, everything shifted.
When I stood on the shores of Lake Turkana and watched the El Molo people encounter Jesus for the first time in their history,[1] I wasn’t there because missions is important. I was there because the same grace that reached down to rescue me was now flowing through me to reach them.
When I sat with Peter LeKombe as God called him to become a lake missionary,[1] sharing in his trembling transformation from desert-dweller to cross-cultural missionary, I wasn’t mentoring him from duty. I was overflowing with the joy of watching costly grace work in another life the way it had worked in mine.
When I witnessed Rev. David Parmuat provide indefatigable pastoral leadership despite grueling seminary exams and weeks of travel,[2] I saw a man driven not by obligation but by the same costly grace that had transformed a Maasai boy’s prophetic dream into decades of faithful cross-cultural ministry.
Here’s the heart examination we all need: What’s driving your participation in the Great Commission? Is it cultural expectation, or costly grace? Is it duty, or delight? Is it because sharing the Gospel is “really important,” or because Christ has so profoundly changed your life that you can’t help but tell others?
If we’re honest, many of us are serving from cheap grace. We’ve accepted forgiveness without embracing transformation. We’ve received salvation without allowing it to reshape our fundamental identity. We’re trying to fulfill Acts 1:8 without first being changed by Acts 1:8.
But here’s the beautiful truth: costly grace is available to every believer. The same power that transformed Paul on the Damascus road, that reshaped my identity on November 9, 2021, that called Peter LeKombe from desert to lake ministry—that power is at work in your life right now.
The question isn’t whether you have access to costly grace. The question is whether you’ll embrace it fully, allowing it to transform not just your eternal destiny but your daily identity, not just your salvation but your service, not just your theology but your testimony.
When we serve from costly grace rather than cheap duty, everything changes. Ministry becomes overflow rather than obligation. Sacrifice becomes privilege rather than burden. The Great Commission becomes not something we have to do, but something we get to do.
This is why Paul could rejoice in his sufferings, why missionaries throughout history have counted it joy to lay down their lives for the Gospel, why believers today leave comfort zones to serve in difficult places. Not because they’re more disciplined or more committed, but because they’ve encountered the costly grace that makes such sacrifice feel like the smallest possible response to infinite love.
Bonhoeffer also wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” This isn’t morbid—it’s liberating. To die to our old identity rooted in self and be raised to new life rooted in Christ. To count the cost of discipleship and find that what we thought was costly was actually the pathway to true freedom.
The cost of discipleship isn’t addition to our lives—it’s transformation of our lives. It’s not doing more religious activities; it’s being made into new creations who naturally overflow with Gospel witness.
If you find yourself serving from duty rather than delight, going through the motions rather than overflowing with gratitude, I encourage you to return to the foot of the cross. Not to get saved again, but to remember what your salvation cost. To move from cheap grace to costly grace. To allow the full weight of Christ’s sacrifice to transform not just your eternity but your everyday.
Because when we truly understand costly grace, when we fully embrace the new creation we’ve been made into, when we allow Christ’s love to compel us rather than cultural expectation to drive us, then we join Paul in declaring: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!”
Not as burden, but as privilege. Not as duty, but as delight. Not as cheap grace, but as costly grace lived out through transformed lives that can’t help but overflow with the good news of Jesus Christ.
The harvest is plentiful, and the workers are few—not because God lacks people, but because too many are content with cheap grace when costly grace is freely available to all who will embrace it fully.
The question isn’t whether you’ll serve. The question is whether you’ll serve from the overflow of a heart transformed by costly grace, or from the obligation of a soul settled for something less than what Christ died to provide.
What will it be?
From one man He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. Acts 17:26-27