We must recognize that no human relationship is going to be finally and completely sufficient.  The finally sufficient relationship must be with God himself.  As Christians we have this relationship, and so our human relationships can be valid without being the finally sufficient thing.  As sinners, acknowledging that we are not perfect in this life, we do not need to cast away every human relationship, including the relationship of marriage, or the relationships of Christians inside the church, or the relationships we find in our work-place relationships and in our neighborhoods just because they prove not to be perfect.  On the basis of the finished work of Christ it is possible, once I have seen this, to begin to understand that my relationships can be substantially healed in the present life.  When two Christians find that their relationship has hit a wall, they can come hand-in-hand and bring their failures under the blood of Christ, and get up again and go on.  Think what this means practically in the areas of human relationships, in marriage, in the church, the parent-child relationships, the employer-employee relationship.   

What we need to hear:  When we say we are a Christian, we need to realize we have a responsibility to demonstrate the existence of God in how we live our life and how we ‘relate’ to others because we have the life of Christ living inside our bodies.  We have love and communication from above and we are made whole from above in our identity and position as being a child of our Heavenly Father.  We must see the God intended design for people loving people ‘because’ we are loved by God.  If there is no demonstration in our attitude toward other men that demonstrates we really take seriously the person-to-person relationship, we might as well keep quiet.  There must be demonstration; that is our calling:  to show that there is a reality in personal relationship, and not just words about it.  If the individual Christian, and if the church of Christ is not allowing the Lord Jesus Christ to bring forth his fruit into the world, as a demonstration in the area of personal relationships, we cannot expect the world to believe.  Lovelessness is a sea that knows no shore, for it is what God is not.  And eventually not only will the other man drown, but I will drown, and worst of all, the demonstration of God drowns as well when there is nothing to be seen but a sea of lovelessness and impersonality.   

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