Fruit is always the miraculous, the created; it is never the result of willing, but always a growth. The fruit of the Spirit is a gift of God, and only He can produce it. They who bear it know as little about it as the tree knows of its fruit. They know only the power of Him on whom their life depends.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who was executed by the Nazis for resisting Hitler’s totalitarian regime, left a rich theological legacy.
One of his books, The Cost of Discipleship (from which the lines above are quoted), is considered a classic of Christian thought. In it, he distinguishes between “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” “Cheap grace,” he wrote, “is the grace we bestow on ourselves…grace without discipleship. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again…. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.” Watch a short and beautiful visual distillation of this teaching here