At present, we are working with the light of truth presented by Dr. Francis Schaeffer from his book True Spirituality where we are discussing the basic considerations of the Christian life, or true Christianity.

So let’s review where we have come in our study and review of Dr. Schaeffer’s work over these past few weeks and months as we finish the chapter, The Fruitful Bride: (This is double gold…read it several times and burn the basic premise of it into your mind…this is who we are and what we were made for 😊) 

It is precisely what we would expect in the light of the total unity of the Bible’s most basic teaching.  The most basic teaching of the Bible is that God exists, and what he is, and the corollary of what man is as made in God’s own image.  We live in a personal universe, and not in an impersonal one.  God exists, God is personal; we are personal, as we have been made in the image of God, and our relationship to God is to be personal, not mechanical.  We are not machines, we are not plants, we are not mere animals, but men, created in the image of God—rational and moral.  When we were created, we were created for a purpose.  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.   

But sin destroyed this.  The creature tried to be on the same level as the creator; the finite (us) sought to be placed on the same level as the infinite (God).  And now, when we are saved on the basis of the finished work of Christ, our guilt is gone and we are returned to this proper relationship, not in a mechanical sense, but in a personal relationship of communion.   

So modern man is struggling properly when he is struggling with his basic question, as to the problem of personality and communication.  According to the Scripture, this struggle is at the right point: not the point of a few superficial taboos, a few superficial conformities, but of the tremendous problem of personality.  The Bible’s answer to the problem is that the central communication that makes all the other communications meaningful is the communication of the Creator and the creature, which is restored when I have accepted Christ as my Savior and my guilt is gone.   

When this has happened, I am not supposed to set up a rival center in the universe all over again.  That would be contrary to the whole thing.  When I have accepted Christ as my Savior, I am to be in my appointed position, in the proper place and in a personal relationship with God.  This that for which were made in the first place.  The only difference between our relationship with God now, and that which man’s would have been if he had not sinned, is that now it is under the covenant of grace, and not under the covenant of works; therefore, it rests on the basis of Christ’s finished mediatorial work.  That is the difference.   

(We will continue with the remainder of True Spirituality) 

Thoughts developed or used directly from the work of Schaeffer, Francis. True Spirituality . Tyndale House Publishers, Inc