You are So Beautiful
Background
I am writing this from Jakarta Indonesia at the conclusion of the World Evangelical Alliance General Assembly. 800 delegates from 92 nations, 3 of us from Australia, gathered to launch a decade of Intentional Holistic Intergenerational Discipleship Making. What a mouthful, but with a conference saturated with doctorates what else would you expect? The Lord however has been speaking to me about a much simpler, more profound and penetrating mode in which to understand what it means to deliberately help one another to become more like Jesus in every part of our lives. Discipleship is helping someone else become more beautiful in the eyes of their heavenly Husband, Christ. A revelation of spiritual beauty must be at the heart of a revival of biblical discipleship in the churches.
A Crisis
Anyone who doesn’t see there’s a crisis in discipleship right across the Australian Church is blind in the eyes of their Lord (Rev 3:17). They’re someone who is the product of this very lack of discipling. Genuine disciples love the spiritual disciplines: they love to pray, read scripture, receive the sacraments, fellowship regularly with other Christians and so on. More than that, in being like Jesus they will be found serving people wherever they are, not just in the Church, but at work too. Sacrificial service is what it means to have “the mind of Christ” (Phil 2:4-7). Sadly, this pattern of life has become rare amongst us. But to establish my point that discipleship is about beautifying I must more carefully define the sort of “beauty” we behold in each other (Ps 27:4).
False Beauty
The beauty I am seeing isn’t like the “You’re all beautiful.” so characteristic of many women’s conferences. Nor is it like the self-admiration of those Christians, Evangelical or Pentecostal, who seem only to associate with those of their own kind. They are in fact spiritual narcissists intoxicated with their own “beautiful” image. I am talking about “the beauty of holiness” (Ps 29:2). This is a deep inner beauty, “the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Pet 3:4). The Lord beholds his own sovereign beautifying work in us in this beauty. All the glory goes to God in the beholding of this beauty. I am speaking about a holiness which cannot be formed without submitting to Christ through a more mature brother or sister. True spiritual sensitivity will infallibly direct us to this beauty.
Wildly Attractive
The I find my wife of 44 years wildly attractive is a deeply spiritual thing. In fact, it is a share in the Spirit of how Christ sees his Bride, the Church. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, 26 that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, 27 that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.” (Eph 5:25-27). The means by which Christ glamourises his people, the application of his Word, is testified to not only here in Ephesians but in the Bible’s pinnacle passage about the marriage of Jesus. “Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; 8 it was granted her to clothe herself withfine linen, bright and pure” (Rev 19:7-8).
The mystery of helping others to become more like Jesus is that it is something the Lord has given us to do for one another. There is nothing more beautiful than the precious truth that Jesus shares with us the task of beautifying his Bride. Through prayer, godly conversation and every other means the Church beautifies herself. In discipleship we help another Christian become eternally splendid for the Lord. There is nothing boring, tedious, dull or routine about such a great vocation. Given this is so we must repent for all our impoverished perspectives on disciple making.
Re-imagined
The Church as we know it needs to have a radical change of mindset (Rom12:1-2). In the Spirit (Rev 1:10), we must see pastors as beauty consultants, Christian counsellors as beauty therapists and everyone who disciples anyone else as a beautician. By definition, beauty attracts us. Why then aren’t people, especially younger people, queuing up to be mentored and taught to obey Jesus so as to be more like him? Since the pure white garments of the beautiful Church in Revelation are the dazzling righteousness that comes through being washed in the blood of the Lamb (Rev 7:14), it must be that we are not ministering in the power of the cross. Evangelical Christians of all persuasions trumpet that they are people of the cross. But if we look around at the generally shabby, defiled state of most of our churches we must repent of the absence of the manifest glory of the originator of all beauty, Jesus (Col 1:16). There can only be a revival in disciple making in our land if the Lord grants us such confession and repentance. I have a sense of how this can happen.
Suffering
I was not surprised when an ex Buddhist monk living as a Tibetan refugee in Nepal told me about the imprisonment of Christian preachers and the mighty miracles the Lord is doing to spread the gospel in that land. Christ’s ecstatic love for the beauty he sees in a suffering Bride is being made manifest by acts of power. Hallelujah! Suffering however comes in many forms. I was deeply impacted by the heartfelt appeal of a young German girl for mentoring and discipleship during our assembly in Indonesia. The Lord spoke to me about making myself available to speak into the lives of young people. Me, someone who has publicly declared he has zero understanding of youngsters. But I can speak to all ages, God willing, of the beauties of the Lord Jesus.
Conclusion
If each of us is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:14) in the image of God as part of the first creation, how much more glory do we have in Christ! But this is a truth only in Christ and as such it can only be seen in the Spirit. Forget about the devil’s lies about a worldly beauty, forget about your own miserable self-estimation, if you see “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 4:6) you see a splendour that will be shared with you by your Husband forever. If the Lamb shed his blood for us, will he not graciously give us whatever we ask of him to beautify others for his praise and honour (Rom 8:32). Ask the Spirit of the Lord to speak to you about of Intentional Holistic Intergenerational Discipleship Making.