The Shelter - A Francis A. Schaeffer Site


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True Spirituality

Summary

In one sense on the day Christ saves us, we are as saved as we will ever be. We are justified before God and no future action can remove His grace from us. In another sense, our salvation is just beginning. God makes us a new creation and then works throughout the rest of our lives to make that new creation more like him until the last day when He glorifies us. This process is called sanctification. In True Spirituality Schaeffer speaks about this process in a practical way.

Commercial Availability of Work

True Spirituality (paper 180 pages)
The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer (paper)
The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer (Windows CDROM)

Quotes From The Book

The true Christian life, true spirituality, is not merely a negative not -- doing of any small list of things. Even if the list began as a very excellent list of things to beware of in that particular historic setting, we still must emphasize that the Christian life, or true spirituality, is more than refraining from a certain external list of taboos in a mechanical way.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, True Spirituality, Ch. 1)

We do not come to true spirituality or the true Christian life merely by keeping a list, but neither do we come to it merely by rejecting the list and then shrugging our shoulders and living a looser life.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, True Spirituality, Ch. 1)

Desire becomes sin when it fails to include love of God or men.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, True Spirituality, Ch. 1)

With the Fall all became abnormal. It is not just that the individual is separated from God by his true moral guilt, but each of us is not what God made us to be. Beyond each of us as individuals, human relationships are not what God meant them to be. And beyond that, nature is abnormal -- the whole cause-and-effect significant history is now abnormal. To say it another way: there is much in history now which should not be.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, True Spirituality, Ch. 1)

The inward area is the first place of loss of true Christian life, of true spirituality, and the outward sinful act is the result. If we can only get hold of this -- that the internal is the basic, the external is always merely the result -- it will be a tremendous starting place.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, True Spirituality, Ch. 1)