Top 94 Francis Schaeffer Quotes
#1. Our relationship with each other is the criterion the world uses to judge whether our message is truthful - Christian community is the final apologetic.
Francis Schaeffer
#2. Tell me what the world is saying today, and I'll tell you what the church will be saying in seven years.
Francis Schaeffer
#3. All men bear the image of God. They have value not because they are redeemed, but because they are God's creation in God's image.
Francis Schaeffer
#4. Humanism is not wrong in its cry for sociological healing, but humanism is not producing it.
Francis Schaeffer
#5. Thank God for the reality for which we were created, a moment-by-moment communication with God himself.
Francis Schaeffer
#6. You must not lose confidence in God because you lost confidence in your pastor. If our confidence in God had to depend upon our confidence in any human person, we would be on shifting sand.
Francis Schaeffer
#7. People drift from generation to generation, and the morally unthinkable becomes thinkable as the years move on.
Francis Schaeffer
#8. Preaching the gospel without the Holy Spirit is to miss the entire point of the command of Jesus Christ for our era. In the area of "Christian activities" or "Christian service," how we are doing it is at least as important as what we are doing.
Francis Schaeffer
#9. Doctrinal rightness and rightness of ecclesiastical position are important, but only as a starting point to go on into a living relationship - and not as ends in themselves.
Francis Schaeffer
#10. The purpose of apologetics is not just to win an argument or a discussion, but that people with whom we are in contact may become Christians and then live under the Lordship of Christ in the whole spectrum of life.
Francis Schaeffer
#11. The ordinary Christian with the Bible in his hand can say that the majority is wrong.
Francis Schaeffer
#12. The great distinction of a true Christian is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. How careful should he be, lest anything in his thoughts or feelings would be offensive to the Divine Guest.!
Francis Schaeffer
#13. Hudson Taylor said, "The Lord's work done in the Lord's way will never fail to have the Lord's provision." ... The Lord's work done in human energy is not the Lord's work any longer. It is something, but it is not the Lord's work.
Francis Schaeffer
#14. That is our calling: to show that there is a reality in personal relationship, and not just words about it.
Francis Schaeffer
#15. You are not Christ's disciple, in the sense of following him, if this is not your way of life: rejected and slain daily!
Francis Schaeffer
#17. In the flesh rather than the work of the Spirit, it is easy to say we are showing holiness and it only be egotistic pride and hardness.
Francis Schaeffer
#18. The Lord is the General, and he has the right ... the sovereign right ... to put us where he wants in the battle.
Francis Schaeffer
#19. If one starts with an impersonal beginning, the answer to morals eventually turns out to be the assertion that there are no morals.
Francis Schaeffer
#20. If we do not show love to one another, the world has a right to question whether Christianity is true.
Francis Schaeffer
#22. Most people do not realize that there was a paid chaplain in Congress even before the Revolutionary War ended.
Francis Schaeffer
#23. If Christians win a battle by using worldly means, they have really lost.
Francis Schaeffer
#24. To die is to be with the Lord. It is not just an idea, it is a reality.
Francis Schaeffer
#26. Eternity will be wonderful, but there is one thing heaven will not contain, and that is the call, the possibility, and the privilege of living a supernatural life here and now by faith, before we meet Jesus face to face.
Francis Schaeffer
#27. We should not view men with a cynical eye, seeing them only as meaningless products of chance, but, on the other hand, we should not go to the opposite extreme of seeing them romantically. To do either is to fail to understand who men really are
creatures made in the image of God but fallen.
Francis Schaeffer
#28. Sometimes the greatest deterrent to a great marriage is believing you have a perfect marriage.
Francis Schaeffer
#29. If Christianity is really true, then it involves the whole man, including his intellect and creativeness. Christianity is not just 'dogmatically' true or 'doctrinally' true. Rather, it is true to what is there, true in the whole area of the whole man in all of life.
Francis Schaeffer
#30. The soul is not more important than the body. God made the whole man and the whole man is important.
Francis Schaeffer
#31. We as Bible-believing evangelical Christians are locked in a battle. This is not a friendly gentleman's discussion. It is a life and death conflict between the spiritual hosts of wickedness and those who claim the name of Christ.
Francis Schaeffer
#32. The inward area is the first place of loss of true Christian life, of true spirituality, and the outward sinful act is the result.
Francis Schaeffer
#33. If the church is what it should be, young people will be there. But they will not just 'be there' - they will be there with the blowing of horns and the clashing of high-sounding cymbals, and they will come dancing with flowers in their hair.
Francis Schaeffer
#34. This shift from the Judeo-Christian basis for law and the shift away from the restraints of the Constitution automatically militates against religious liberty.
Francis Schaeffer
#36. If man has been kicked up out of that which is only impersonal by chance , then those things that make him man-hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication-are ultimately unfulfillable and thus meaningless.
Francis Schaeffer
#37. The one thing the media abhors almost without exception is anyone who takes a firm stand on any issue out of religious principle, unless their stand happens to coincide with their expressed views.
Francis Schaeffer
#38. The beginning of men's rebellion against God was, and is, the lack of a thankful heart.
Francis Schaeffer
#39. Some psychological and sociological conditioning occurs in every man's life and this affects the decisions he makes. But we must resist the modern concept that all sin can be explained merely on the basis of conditioning.
Francis Schaeffer
#40. It is only as we consciously bring each victory to His feet, and keep it there as we think of it - and especially as we speak of it - that we can avoid the pride of that victory, which can be worse than the sin over which we claim to have had the victory.
Francis Schaeffer
#41. God has communicated to man, the infinite to the finite. The One who made man capable of language in the first place has communicated to man in language about both spiritual reality and physical reality, about the nature of God and the nature of man.
Francis Schaeffer
#42. Modern multiple divorce is rooted in the fact that many are seeking in human relationships what human relationships can never give. Why do they have multiple divorce, instead of merely promiscuous affairs? Because they are seeking more than merely sexual relationship.
Francis Schaeffer
#43. The Christian should be the person who is alive, whose imagination absolutely boils, which moves, which produces something a bit different from God's world because God made us to be creative.
Francis Schaeffer
#44. I have come to the conclusion that none of us in our generation feels as guilty about sin as we should or as our forefathers did.
Francis Schaeffer
#45. And the purpose of our creation, in which all our subsidiary purposes fit, is to be in a personal relationship to God, in communion with him, in love, by choice, the creature before the Creator.
Francis Schaeffer
#46. If there is no absolute by which to judge society, society is absolute.
Francis Schaeffer
#47. When I accept Christ as my Savior ... I am immediately in a new and living relationship with each of the three persons of the Trinity.
Francis Schaeffer
#48. If you want a significant man, with absolutes, morality, and meaning, then you must have what the Bible insists upon - that God will judge men justly, and they will not be able to raise their voices because of the base upon which He judges them.
Francis Schaeffer
#49. So our building of the visible Church becomes much like any natural business function, using natural means and natural motives.
Francis Schaeffer
#50. The modern concept of separation is an argument for a total separation of religion from the state. The consequence of the acceptance of the doctrine leads to the removal of religion as an influence in civil government.
Francis Schaeffer
#51. In passing, we should note this curious mark of our own age: the only absolute allowed is the absolute insistence that there is no absolute.
Francis Schaeffer
#52. If God exists and we are made in his image we can have real meaning, and we can have real knowledge through what he has communicated to us.
Francis Schaeffer
#53. Our trusting the Lord does not mean that there are not times of tears. I think it is a mistake as Christians to act as though trusting the Lord and tears are not compatible.
Francis Schaeffer
#54. We must stress that the basis for our faith is neither experience nor emotion but the truth as God has given it in verbalized, prepositional form in the Scripture and which we first of all apprehend with our minds.
Francis Schaeffer
#55. Art is a reflection of God's creativity, an evidence that we are made in the image of God.
Francis Schaeffer
#56. True spirituality consists in living moment to moment by the grace of Jesus Christ.
Francis Schaeffer
#57. The arbitrary division between church and state ... is used, as an easily identifiable rallying point, to subdue the opinions of that vast body of citizens who represent those with religious convictions.
Francis Schaeffer
#58. When my conscience under the Holy Spirit makes me aware of a specific sin I should at once call that sin sin and bring it consciously under the blood of Christ.
Francis Schaeffer
#59. If I'm going to be in the right relationship with God, I should treat the things he has made in the same way he treats them.
Francis Schaeffer
#62. Reformation is a return to the sound doctrine of the Bible. Revival is the practice of that sound doctrine under the power of the Holy Spirit.
Francis Schaeffer
#63. Jesus taught that the mark of the Christian is the observable love shown among all true believers.
Francis Schaeffer
#64. Truth always carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation nevertheless. If our reflex action is always accommodation regardless of the centrality of the truth involved, there is something wrong.
Francis Schaeffer
#65. Truth demands confrontation. It must be loving confrontation, but there must be confrontation nonetheless.
Francis Schaeffer
#66. There are two main reasons why we may not be bringing forth the fruit we should. It may be because of ignorance, because we may never have been taught the meaning of the work of Christ for our present lives.
Francis Schaeffer
#67. Christianity believes that God has created an external world that is really there; and because He is a reasonable God, one can expect to be able to find the order of the universe by reason.
Francis Schaeffer
#68. We must remember throughout our lives that in God's sight there are no little people and no little places. Only one thing is important: to be consecrated persons in God's place for us, at each moment.
Francis Schaeffer
#69. What we, the Christian community, have to do is to refuse men the right to ravish our land, just as we refuse them the right to ravish our women; to insist that somebody accepts a little less profit by not exploiting nature.
Francis Schaeffer
#70. Modern man has not only thrown away Christian theology, he has thrown away the possibility of what our forefathers had as a basis for morality and law.
Francis Schaeffer
#71. The difference between Christian thinking and the non-Christian philosopher has always been at this point. The non-Christian philosopher has always said that man is normal now, but biblical Christianity says he is abnormal now.
Francis Schaeffer
#72. No work of art is more important than the Christian's life, and every Christian is called to be an artist in this sense ... The Christian's life is to be a thing of truth and also a thing of beauty in the midst of a lost and despairing world.
Francis Schaeffer
#73. Eve doubted God, and I as a child of God am now to be exactly the opposite: I am to believe him. Eve doubted, and mankind in revolt doubts God. To believe him, not just when I accept Christ as Savior, but every moment, one moment at a time: this is the Christian life, and this is true spirituality.
Francis Schaeffer
#74. The church's or Christian group's methods are as important as its message.
Francis Schaeffer
#75. Reality is not meant to be only creedal, though the creeds are important. Reality is to be experienced, and experienced on the basis of a restored relationship with God through that finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross.
Francis Schaeffer
#77. I hesitate to add, but I will, that this is fun. God means Christianity to be fun. There is to be a reality of love and communication in the Christian-to-Christian relationship, individually and corporately, which is completely and truly personal.
Francis Schaeffer
#78. Man, made in the image of God, has a purpose - to be in relationship to God, who is there. Man forgets his purpose and thus he forgets who he is and what life means.
Francis Schaeffer
#79. There is a sad myth going around today - the myth of neutrality. According to this myth, the secular world gives every point of view an equal chance to be heard. And it works fairly well - unless you are a Christian.
Francis Schaeffer
#80. Things, things, things. Always more things, and success is seen as the abundance of things.
Francis Schaeffer
#81. There is no use of Evangelicalism seeming to get larger and larger, if at the same time appreciable parts of Evangelicalism are getting soft at that which is the central core, namely the Scriptures.
Francis Schaeffer
#82. I believe that pluralistic secularism, in the long run, is a more deadly poison than straightforward persecution.
Francis Schaeffer
#83. Each generation of the church in each setting has the responsibility of communicating the gospel in understandable terms, considering the language and thought-forms of that setting.
Francis Schaeffer
#84. Ours is a post-Christian world in which Christianity, not only in the number of Christians but in cultural emphasis and cultural result, is no longer the consensus or ethos of our society.
Francis Schaeffer
#86. Christ's crucifixion was on a hill, by a road, where everybody who passed by could not only see his pain, but also his shame. It was not done in a shadow, hidden away somewhere.
Francis Schaeffer
#87. The overall way of thinking in the United States has shifted away from basic Biblical values, and the media share in the responsibility for this change.
Francis Schaeffer
#88. The spiritual battle, the loss of victory, is always in the thought-world.
Francis Schaeffer
#89. Any denomination or church group that forsakes inerrancy will end up shipwrecked. It is impossible to prevent the surrender of other important doctrinal teachings of the Word of God when inerrancy is gone.
Francis Schaeffer
#90. This equation of the impersonal plus time plus chance producing the total configuration of the universe and all that is in it, modern people hold by faith.
Francis Schaeffer
#91. In my reading of philosophy, I saw that there were innumerable problems that nobody was giving answers for. the Bible, it struck me, dealt with man's problems in a sweeping, all-encompassing thrust.
Francis Schaeffer
#93. In fact, philosophy is universal in scope. No man can live without a world view; therefore, there is no man who is not a philosopher.
Francis Schaeffer
#94. Christianity is the greatest intellectual system the mind of man has ever touched.
Francis Schaeffer
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