Is God Beautiful?
The first time I heard God described as beautiful was probably in the lyrics of a Keith Green song. I have to admit, my initial reaction was to cringe slightly. I was used to describing God as perfect, holy, glorious, majestic and various exalted adjectives with the prefix ‘omni’. Yet, I initially recoiled thinking that the aforementioned Mr Green was being too emotional, sidelining solid doctrine in favour of gushing sentimentality.
‘He had no beauty to attract us’
My reaction was perhaps the result of a combination of the exalted nature of God and his ‘otherness’ that I gleaned from my home church, coupled with a good dose of British reserve with regards to expression of emotion! And I also felt it was biblical, after all in that most poignant of all the Old Testament prophecies about Christ, Isaiah wrote:
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
(Is 53:2)
So, Jesus Christ – who the New Testament describes as being “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb 1:2) seems to specifically exclude descriptions of ‘beauty’. In fact, at the cross Jesus was not adored but mocked, and viewed as repellent and not attractive in any way. (Ps 22:7, Matt 27:39)
My youthful recoiling from talking about the beauty of God seemed, not merely a cultural prejudice, but a biblically informed one. I want to tell you why I have completely changed my mind on that, why I want to speak often and well about the beauty of God – and why it is a driver for us in evangelism!
The beautiful shepherd
At a large Christian conference last November the teaching was based around the idea that Christ presents himself to us as ‘The Good Shepherd’. One of the speakers, explained that the word ‘good’ was a nuanced and complex word which gets a little flattened in English. He said that the original also means beautiful. It’s a conclusion strongly affirmed by the study app the Blue Letter Bible which tells us the following about that word.
Beautful indeed!
You too?
Tim Keller describes what he calls ‘Spiritual Friendship’ like this. He pictured two people and suggested that only if they were in the first flushes of infatuated love would they be staring directly at one another. Most relationships are fuelled by the friends looking away from themselves and together experiencing something in which they both mutually delight. He pictures two art-lovers standing together appreciating the same painting and being moved by the shared experience. We might equally imagine attending a brilliant concert with someone.
After all, as Keller points out, there’s something delightful when you meet someone who shares the same interest as you – especially if it is niche! Chess fans, trainspotters, jazz-enthusiasts, beer-brewers, gardeners, cyclists, and Munro-baggers when they discover each other smile and say “Oh, you too!” (As Keller notes)
Beyond the niche
These niche interests are subjective and no-one would expect everyone to embrace them. There is no world in which everyone will like jazz, or football, or computer gaming, water-polo, the 1970s albums of Barclay James Harvest, or the writings of Kurt Vonnegut. But devotees of all such things do seem to long for others to see what they have seen; to be moved by what has so moved them. I know a chap who is such an avid fan of the late Irish guitarist Gary Moore that he drops his name into conversation everytime he meets someone new, looking for that “oh, you as well!” meeting of minds!
The biblical claim is however that God is not one god amongst gods, not one beautiful aesthetic choice amongst many, not something which seen in all is fullness could leave any heart unmoved. Rather he is the one true, living God, the good shepherd, the one source of all light, love, warmth, truth and beauty – and the one to whom all earthy beauty points.
Oh that the world might know!
There is something about the desire to share the gospel which goes beyond the desire for the other person to agree with you, and affirm what you value. In and of itself, such a desire could be self-orientated, and evangelism could be seen as some form of self-validation. Evangelism on this basis could be little more than wanting others to see the world like we do, so that we can feel vindicated in our personal choices and loves..
But that wouldn’t really capture the essence of New Testament evangelism. Our claim is not merely that we have found God to be personally satisfyingly beautiful, but that He is beauty itself.
Tim Keller: do we see God as beautiful or just useful?
Keller again, in one of his most well known quotes said this:
I think that this drives us to the very heart of what the Christian gospel is; which both brings us face to face with who God is, and compels us to share the message and experience with others.
If ‘religion’ wants God to be ‘useful’, it is because religious systems seek to bargain with their god; offering the deity in question whatever services or sacrifices are required in order to obtain certain goods. These goods might be a place in heaven, a good life, or health and healing. The point is that the goods are the ends, the god is the means; and we are the decisive actors in the drama.
In the gospel none of the above apply. This is because the Christian gospel says that God is the decisive driver of the action, and that He has in Christ fulfilled all the righteous requirements of the law; and in Christ taken our place in death on the cross; to liberate us from the law of sin and death. The consequences of that are enormous, and not just because we are no longer trying to negotiate with God though good works; but beacuse we are also not trying to use God to gain goods. Rather we respond to the overwhelming love of God for us and long to see Him and spend eternity with Him. God is not the means-to-an-end; rather knowing Him is the great end! Everything else is a surpassing loss compared to knowing Christ Jesus as Lord! And this is compelling and overwhelmingly beautiful.
God is our ends, not means!
That thought is expressed in the great doxology of Romans:
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and[i] knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counsellor?”[j]
35 “Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay them?”[k]
36 For from him and through him and for him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
Evangelism transformed
When we encounter this God, through this gospel, evangelism cannot be a legalistic drudgery which we must do. Likewise, it is not the mere selfish quest for the validation of our own views. Instead, in Christ we have seen the greatest possible beauty, and we ache for the world to see it too. We have found the purpose (logos) of life and long for wanderers to find that. We have found the source of all love, and long for the sick, the sad, and the broken to be enfolded within it. We have found the one who substitutes himself for our sins, so we go free – and long for others to experience the weight of guilt lifted from their necks. In this fallen world where everything we encounter is in some way, to some degree, twisted and tainted; here is undiluted love, grace and self-emptying goodness. To the eye which has only ever beheld the corrupt, the cross of Christ is quite unlike anything we have ever encountered. Beautiful.
The cross – beautiful scars
The cross of Christ is not visually beautiful, of course. The man hanging there breathing his last is broken, tormented, scarred, humiliated and bloody. Such executions were designed not just to be good ways of killing, but slow, de-humanising and public. Rome displayed its crucified to public shame to dissuade other would-be rebels or messiahs from challenging their Imperial writ. Indeed one of the criminals crucified along with Christ hurled abuse at him, he clearly thought the sight was appalling.
The other thief, on the other side of the cross – also dying a criminals death that day – was rather differently disposed to the situation. He sought Christ’s blessing on him, as they both hung dry and dying in the heat of the desert. Behind the ugliness of death, the sadism of execution, the betrayal of friends and the writhing agony of nail piercing; this second thief saw the beauty of the gospel which underlies it. He somehow saw that Christ was dying for others, in order to save them, “the righteous for the unrighteous to bring us to God” as the New Testament would have it; is the very essence of moral perfection – and is the most beautiful thing ever done in the history of humanity. Perfection stoops to serve the imperfect, the powerful bends to rescue the weak, and the wise steps in to rescue the fool. And this is not primarily to gain anything for himself in the first instance – but to give; because in the moral perfection of His character He is a giver. He is then glorified as the whole universe admires His self-giving love and cries “Beautiful Saviour!”
It is here at the ugliness of calvary, with is appalling sounds; it’s sickening sights, its’ revolting smells; where the son of God has no physical beauty with which to attract us – that we meet the God who can only be described as morally, and personally and generously beautiful. And when you have glimpsed him, your whole being will ache for the whole cosmos to see Him too.
As songwriter Stuart Townend would put it:
Beautiful Saviour, Wonderful Counsellor,
Clothed in majesty, Lord of history,
You’re the Way, the Truth, the Life.
Star of the Morning, glorious in holiness,
You’re the Risen One, heaven’s Champion
And You reign, You reign over all.
I long to be where the praise is never-ending,
Yearn to dwell where the glory never fades;
Where countless worshippers will share one song,
And cries of ‘worthy’ will honour the Lamb!
