Francis Schaeffer on the Double Task of the Christian

Francis Schaeffer:

The Christian really has a double task.

He has to practice both God’s holiness and God’s love. The Christian is to exhibit that God exists as the infinite-personal God; and then he is to exhibit simultaneously God’s character of holiness and love.

Not His holiness without His love: this is only harshness.

Not His love without His holiness: that is only compromise.

Anything that an individual Christian or Christian group does that fails to show the simultaneous balance of the holiness of God and the love of God presents to a watching world not a demonstration of the God who exists but a caricature of the God who exists.

—Francis Schaeffer, The Mark of Love, in A Christian View of the Church: The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer, vol. 4 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1982), 193-94.