Notable Quotable: Francis Schaeffer — Our communication…must be in genuine love

We must remember that the person to whom we are talking, however far from the Christian faith he may be, is an image-bearer of God. He has great value, and our communication to him must be in genuine love. Love is not an easy thing; it is not just an emotional urge, but an attempt to move over and sit in the other person’s place and see how his problems look to him. Love is a genuine concern for the individual. As Jesus Christ reminds us, we are to love that individual “as ourselves.” This is the pace we begin. Therefore, to be engaged in personal “witness” as a duty or because our Christian circle exerts a social pressure on us, is to miss the whole point. The reason we do it is that the person before us is an image-bearer of God, and he is an individual who is unique in the world… Genuine love, in the last analysis, means a willingness to be entirely exposed to the person to whom we are talking.

The one before us is our kind. The Bible teachers that there are two humanities; yet, looking at it another way, there is only one humanity. There are two humanities in the sense that there are those still in rebellion against God, and there are those who have returned to God through Jesus Christ. But this should not dull us to the fact that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.”

— Francis Schaeffer

From Francis Schaeffer, The God Who is There in The Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books: 1990) 131

Francis A. Schaeffer (January 30, 1912 – May 15, 1984) was an pastor, lecturer, and authort, who founded the study center and Christian community L’Abri Fellowship. A profound Christian thinker and apologist, Schaeffer understood the despair of humanity severed from God, but the worlds constructed by those apart from God can never satisfy them with what they need the most, and only Christ can heal the divide between God and humankind. Schaeffer published numerous works including The God Who is There, Escape from Reason, and He is There and He is Not Silent.