God is Beautiful

God is beautiful. He is glorious. In Revelation 4, we see a picture of God the Father sitting on His throne with the appearance like a jasper and sardius stone.  An emerald rainbow encircles His throne, declaring His merciful nature. The four living creatures unceasingly cry, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God, the Almighty…” God’s beauty is seen in the fact that He is unlike anything or anyone we have ever known.  He is transcendent and holy.  His Holiness, or “other-than-ness”, makes Him beautiful.  David declared that splendor and majesty are before Him, that strength and beauty are in His sanctuary (Psalm 96:6).

We see the beauty of God displayed in the nature and life of His Son, Jesus Christ.  Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life and then died a sacrificial death on our behalf.  He tangibly displayed the love, desire, mercy and justice of God’s heart.  When we see Jesus we see the Father because Jesus is the exact representation of Him. We truly see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. 

What makes Jesus so beautiful is His heart, or His nature; what He is like.  The Gospels proclaim the meekness, humility, tenderness, compassion, justice, mercy, righteousness and steadfastness of Jesus’ sacrificial love.  Because Jesus’ beauty isn’t an outward quality but an inward reality – it’s who He is – we have the hope of being transformed into His very image.  Paul, in Romans 8:29, tells us that we are predestined to become conformed to the image of the Son. It is the desire of God’s heart that we be transformed into His likeness and display His glorious beauty.

The way that we become confirmed to the image of Jesus is by being transformed through the renewing of our mind.  When we allow the Holy Spirit to wash and sanctify our minds and hearts with God’s Word, our minds are renewed and our lives are transformed.  As we gaze at God – look at Him, read His Word and talk to Him – we are conformed into His image. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as the Lord, the Spirit.” Jesus gives us His beauty.  We don’t earn it or deserve it but He bestows it upon us as a gift that is to be received with grace and gratitude.  When we give Him our ashes and our mourning, He gives us His joy and His beauty.  The cross made a way for this beautifying divine exchange.

We communicate the beauty of Jesus by proclaiming what makes Him beautiful and by being transformed into His likeness, having the Word – that which reveals His beauty - become flesh in us. Oh that we would radiate the beauty of Jesus to a world that would ask us, “What kind of beloved is your beloved, O most beautiful among women?”