Discipleship - not cheap grace

I and perhaps most Christians struggle with Phillipians 2:12, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling". "Work" and "salvation" in the same sentence is confusing to a reformed church steeped in sola gratia. Isn't work the enemy of grace? We are obsessed with the T of TULIP– total depravity, which reminds us that we contribute NOTHING to our salvation. We read Romans 3:10-18, "there is none righteous…there is none who understands…there is none who does good." So how could we possibly work out our salvation? Doesn't work imply some sort of human contribution, opposed to to the doctrine of grace? I’ve heard such work explained away simply as a taking stock of our behavior to indicate whether or not we will be saved (go to heaven) when we die. Work by that interpretation is not human effort, but a kind of reading of the signs - thus its ok b/c it doesn't threaten to diminish grace. Honestly, I don’t think that’s what Paul meant.

Such a perspective views salvation only as "life after death", and ignores the life that Christ calls us to live here on earth. Such a perspective views grace as "God letting us into heaven despite our wickedness", and ignores the grace that allows us to be holy and righteous in the world now. In The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer terms this perspective "cheap grace".

The problem that Bonhoeffer identifies, is that the church has sought to preserve grace (salvation by grace alone through Christ alone) by eliminating all human effort and anything that smacks of "work" from the lives of Christians. To prove that we're saved by grace alone, and to prove that we're not saved b/c we've done good works or chosen to abandon vulgar behaviors - to prove this, we emphasize our wretchedness and even brag of our vulgarities. The result is that our lives look no different than the lives of the rest of the unbelieving world (the invisible difference, of course, is that by the luck-of-the-divine-draw our sins are forgiven and theirs are not, so we get to go to heaven, and they don’t).
Does the reformed church really believe this? Perhaps we don’t put it quite like that, but I think that’s basically the doctrine of grace that most reformed believers adhere to.

But that is not grace, that is cheap grace.

If we read beyond Romans 3, beyond the Old Testament description of our total depravity, we find that man is given new life through Christ - new life that is no longer depraved, but free to perform works of righteousness. Its here that Paul also rejects the cheap grace perspective: that Christ’s death and resurrection have paid for our sins, and therefore we can and should go on sinning so that grace may abound (Romans 6:1). Grace does not abound only in providing heaven to sinners. Grace abounds in sinners restored to the image of God. Grace abounds in sinners walking daily in newness of life, which of course includes eternal life (Romans 6:4). Grace abounds in sinners working out their salvation through fear and trembling, for it is only by God’s grace that we are able to perform good works, follow, and obey Him. Grace abounds in discipleship.
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2 Bonhoeffer quotes...
"Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system," and "therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God."

"So long as our church holds the correct doctrine of justification, there is no doubt whatever that she is a justified church…so we leave the following of Christ to legalists …and enthusiasts – and all this for the sake of grace, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, has freed me from that rigor."

...and a U2 lyric
"Grace, she travels outside of karma, when she goes to work, you can hear her strings. Grace, she carries a world on her hip...she carries a pearl in perfect condition."