It’s been a while since I’ve read Francis A. Schaeffer book—perhaps five years. I had been on quite a Schaeffer kick for a while there, as I had packed only a few books to take with me overseas, and his Complete Works in five or six volumes was part of that trove. His two books He is There and He Is Not Silent and Escape from Reason played a huge role in my thinking during those early years of intercultural ministry, and they still resonate with me even today.

This particular selection is but an essay originally published as part of the longer work, The Church at the End of the 20th Century, but Intervarsity Press recognized its important message, publishing this selection alone for those passing readers who wouldn’t dare pick up the larger book.

The essay may seem small and nothing more than a sermon on John 13:33-35 and John 17:21, but it packs a powerful wallop. “What is the mark of the Christian?” Schaeffer asks. It’s nothing more than love, love for humanity in general and love for the church in particular. It’s a love that says “I’m sorry” and a love that forgives. It’s a love that respects, despite the conflict. It’s a love that doesn’t just cross the aisle of the church, but crosses the town and the country and even the world itself.

More specifically, the love that marks a true Christian is a love that sends two very important messages to the lost world. First, from John 13:33-35, it’s a love that identifies to non-believers that this person truly is a follower of Christ. Are we all perfect? Can we ever love as Jesus loved, day-in and day-out, world without end? Of course not, yet when we fail to love, we unintentionally send a message to a watching world that we really aren’t Christians! This isn’t to say that we are unsaved and thus lack the Holy Spirit, but rather that we have, in their minds, effectively destroyed whatever testimony we had, thereby making a mockery of our faith. This has been the sad state of many Christians in many churches throughout the past fifty years since this book was published, but sadly, this is not even the worst of it!

Second, from John 17, our love send the message to the non-believing world that the Father has sent the Son. When we love the way we ought, not only do the lost see that we are Christians, but that Christianity itself has some weight to it. “Perhaps this Gospel thing really does make sense!” they ponder. But when we fail to love—and we do often fail to love, do we not?—those non-believers see our failure, and not only do they disbelieve our claim of Christianity, they also disbelieve the Gospel message we represent, that the Father has sent the Son.

What a terrible indictment against those Christians who simply can’t get along! Yet this is not merely the message of Francis A. Schaeffer in 1970: this was the message of Jesus Christ Himself two thousand years ago, and it’s the message of the Word still today. Christian love and unity (“that they all may be one”) results in Gospel power (“that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me”).

This was an encouraging read for me today, and it’s a message that I think all Christians need to hear, perhaps for the first time or perhaps for the hundredth. Without love to back it up, our words—even that beautiful Gospel message that “God loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”—may just be noise to the lost who are watching us, a banging gong or a clanging symbol.

Oh may it never be said of us!

©2020 E.T.

Read More from Francis Schaeffer:

• The God Who Is There (1968)
• Escape from Reason (1968)
• The Mark of a Christian (1970)
• True Spirituality (1971)
• Genesis in Space and Time (1972)
• He Is There, And He Is Not Silent (1972)
• Basic Bible Studies (1972)
• Art and the Bible (1973)
• Introduction to Francis Schaeffer (1974)
• No Little People (1974)
• No Final Conflict (1975)
• Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History (1975)