Destined for Beauty

We are destined for beauty. The beauty of intimate eternal communion and fellowship, unity in diversity under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Why is this our destiny? this is our destiny because of what God says in Genesis 1.26

Genesis 1:26 ESV

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Who is this God that we image? He is the perfection of beauty. He is beautiful community in his eternal life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is absolute unity in diversity and diversity in unity. This means that we are created by God to glorify him as beautiful community.

It’s crucial for us to always orient ourselves as God’s people to this truth because the question is, “In a climate of deepening polarization along lines of class and culture, race and ethnicity, along lines of partisan politics, even in the church, why should we continue to press toward the embodiment of unity in diversity in the local church?”

Listen to the words found in Isaiah 61:10-62:3,

Isaiah 61:10–62:3 ESV

10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11 For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations. 1 For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. 2 The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. 3 You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

This is the voice of the Anointed One, the Messiah. The Savior shouts with joy! What’s the reason for all this joy? It’s because his God has dressed him in salvation’s garments. He’s wrapped him in the cloak of righteousness. He’s not wearing the garments of salvation and the robe of righteousness for his own sake. He’s wearing them for our sake!

And he gives us a guarantee of beauty; personal beauty, collective beauty, where nothing that is not beautiful will ever exist again. This guarantee sounds like a fantasy, but it is backed by the full faith and credit of God himself. In spite of the way we often don’t trust one another, in spite of the fact that we’re not always magnificently merciful, or we’re often not lavish with our love; in spite of the fact that the people of God are sometimes ugly toward one another and our neighbors, God himself promises that he will make us beautiful.

How are you and I to believe the promise at a time when your experience tells you that things are frail, fragile, and seem to be hanging on by a thread? How do we not scoff at the notion of a promise of lavish beauty at a time when things seem so desolate?

The answer, family, is that it must be by faith. This isn’t news, but the Lord always calls his people to apprehend his promises primarily by faith and not by sight. To put it another way, family, we always live on the basis of God’s promise as we wait expectantly for the fullness of the promise to be realized.