# “The church is something beautiful” by Francis Schaeffer

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2010/04/13/the-church-is-something-beautiful-by-francis-schaeffer/
- Published: 2010-04-13T08:19:24-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“One cannot explain the explosive power of the early church apart from the fact 
that they practiced two things simultaneously: the orthodoxy of doctrine and orthodoxy
of community in the midst of the visible church, a community which the world could
see.

By the grace of God, therefore, the church must be known simultaneously for its 
purity of doctrine and the reality of its community. Our churches have so often 
been only preaching points with very little emphasis on community. But the exhibition
of the love of God in practice is beautiful and must be there.

We have, then, two sets of parallel couplets: (1) the principle of the purity of
the visible church, and yet the practice of observable love among all true Christians;
and (2) the practice of orthodoxy of doctrine and observable orthodoxy of community
in the visible church.

The heart of these sets of principles is to show forth the love of God and the holiness
of God simultaneously. If we show either of these without the other, we exhibit 
not the character, but a caricature of God for the world to see.

If we stress the love of God without the holiness of God, it turns out only to be
compromise. But if we stress the holiness of God without the love of God, we practice
something that is hard and lacks beauty. And it is important to show forth beauty
before a lost world and a lost generation.

All too often people have not been wrong in saying that the church is ugly. In the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are called upon to show a watching world and to
our own young people that the church is something beautiful.

Several years ago I wrestled with the question of what was wrong with much of the
church that stood for purity. I came to the conclusion that in the flesh we can 
stress purity without love or we can stress the love of God without purity, but 
that in the flesh we cannot stress both simultaneously.

In order to exhibit both simultaneously, we must look moment by moment to the work
of Christ, to the work of the Holy Spirit. Spirituality begins to have real meaning
in our moment-by-moment lives as we begin to exhibit simultaneously the holiness
of God and the love of God.”

–Francis Schaeffer, “The Church Before the Watching World” in [_The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0891073310?tag=toletaupanre-20)
in [_The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, Volume Four, A Christian View of the Church_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0891073310?tag=toletaupanre-20)(
Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1982), 152.

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