5. Beholding the Beauty of the Mystery
The key to understanding what God is doing is to see where he is going; “What God plans first he performs last.” This is why we must pay careful attention to the climax of human history is a marriage; that between Christ and the Church. Since it has been wisely said, “Every bride is beautiful.”, beauty is at the heart of why God created the world. As a young believer I can recall hearing sermons on the Church as a Bride from the King James Version, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.” (Eph 5:25-27). This image of the people of God as a radiant betrothed woman was interesting, but perhaps because I wasn’t yet married it never gripped me.
Decades later when I was lecturing theology my interest was attracted by a Ph.D. thesis of a companion lecturer on, “The joy of the Lord”. He argued that Paul’s exhortation, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” (Phil 4:4), meant that Christians are called to share in God’s own joy. Or more specifically, to be united with the joy Jesus has. This seemed to me correct. Reading the thesis took me spiritually deeper through its discussion on the beauty of God. This argued that if the glory of God is pleasant, desirable and attractive it is beautiful. The thesis quoted Karl Barth in a way that indicated God’s beauty was practical. “God’s beauty embraces death as well as life, fear as well as joy, what we might call the ugly as well as what we might call the beautiful.” This clearly pointed to the cross, and I was reminded of a book of Christian poetry written by Word War I army chaplain G.A. Studdert-Kennedy about suffering and the crucifixion. It was called The Unutterable Beauty. The teaching of the thesis on divine beauty was fascinating and I sensed it was important; but it seemed beyond the reach of my experience.
Then in 2010 I was in Jerusalem where one of the most profound experiences of my life happened in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (the site of Jesus crucifixion, burial and resurrection). I had long seen myself called to be a “prophet of the cross” and so before entering the church I was very much asking the Lord to speak to me there. Once inside, the place was thronging with people from all over the world there on pilgrimage. Filipinos singing in Tagalog, Germans praying the Lord’s Prayer in German, the atmosphere was very intense. Then the Lord spoke to me unexpectedly through an external symbol. When you enter the chapel that stands over the site where Jesus was crucified a large painting faces you. It shows Jesus stripped and nailed horizontally to the cross. As I looked at the face in the painting something strange and wonderful happened. My heart was filled with a precious awareness and I could clearly sense the Father was saying; “This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.” As Christ was crucified the Father saw a beautifying love for himself and for the lost world of a degree that he had never witnessed before. Here at last was a Son, a human being, perfectly submissive to his will. This is the glory of God; this is what makes God proud to be a Father of “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5).
The Old Testament has many prophetic pointers to the coming inexhaustible beauty of Jesus. The robes of the High Priest were “for glory and for beauty” (Ex 28:2). Only Jesus the true eternal High Priest (Heb 6:20; 7:28) possessed a holy character at one with such splendid outer garments. The psalmists speaks of worshipping the Lord in “the beauty of holiness” (29:2; 96:9), something only the perfectly holy deeds of Christ could achieve. Isaiah prophesied of the “king in his beauty” (Isa 33:17) and Psalm 45 pictured a royal wedding between “the most handsome of the sons of men” and an “all glorious” princess bride (Ps 45:2, 13). These are portraits of the sheer splendour of the Jesus and the Church. A beauty that springs from the cross. In the Old Testament the total destruction of “whole burnt offerings” ascended to God as a “pleasing aroma” (Gen 8:21; Ex 29:18; Lev 2:2; Ezek 16:19 etc.) because they represented the total sacrifice of something precious and valuable. All of which was a sign of the death of Jesus. “And walk in love, las Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Eph 5:1).
The heart of God was totally satisfied with the sacrifice of his Son on the cross, on our behalf. This is a very powerful reality. I am reminded of being in prayer one day in the church building where I had been pastoring. Things were tough going there and the people had become increasingly critical of my ministry. Then I had a truly surprising sense the Lord was saying, “I am satisfied with these people.” More than that, he was calling me to tell them of his satisfied heart the next Sunday as I preached, which I did. It wasn’t that the Father was satisfied with their character or behaviour, which became worse as time went on, but that being “in Christ” they were located in God’s heart set at rest by the blood of the cross.
A few years after my ground-breaking revelation of the beauty of the death of Jesus in Jerusalem my wife Donna and I travelled to the ruins of the cities of the 7 Churches of Revelation and on to the island of Patmos. This was where the aged apostle John was imprisoned “on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (Rev 1:9) and received the visions of the book of Revelation. What happened to me on Patmos was a real share in the relationship between Jesus the Bridegroom and the Church his Bride. But before sharing this testimony it’s important to give the biblical background.
The Old Testament freely spoke about Israel as the Wife of God, though she is unfaithful to her Husband (Isa 54:5; Jer 3:1-14; Ezek 16:1-63; Hos 2:2ff etc.). The prophets therefore spoke of a new day when the marriage between the Lord and his people would be without blemish (Isa 62:1-5; Hos 2:16). The “mystery” that was unveiled in the New Testament is that God’s people will be married to his Messiah, who is Jesus.
Paul teaches, ““Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” (Eph 5:31-32). The husband of the Lord’s chosen people, the Church, is God and man. And every marriage is called to share in and reflect the glory and beauty of this marriage between Jesus and the Church. The depths of the mystery that connects a husband-wife to Christ-Church is that we are together inside the new covenant with humanity created by the blood of the cross (Matt 26:28; 1 Cor 11:25). A Christian couple, in this case Donna and myself, really share in the Spirit in the relationship between Jesus and his Bride.
When Paul instructs, “as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands” and husbands to “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph 5:24-25), his counsel is deeply real. He doesn’t mean that the submission and love in my marriage are in parallel or merely image the relationship between the Church and Christ. We share in that end-time spiritual reality. Paul teaches that human marriage was created for and draws its life and meaning from the end-time marriage of Christ and the Church. Since “everything was created through Jesus and for Jesus” (Col 1:16) it could not be any other way. This is a profound mystery which points to the reason why God created the world as unveiled in Revelation.
Knowing these things I knew that if I was ever going to visit Patmos I needed to have my wife with me. I was at the breakfast table with Donna on our first morning on the island, as Jesus will dine with the Church when he comes to marry us (Rev 19:6-10). Suddenly I was aware that though the apostle John was on Patmos as a prisoner for his faith it was for him an island of extreme joy. “Then I heard again what sounded like the shout of a vast crowd or the roar of mighty ocean waves or the crash of loud thunder: “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.7 Let us be glad and rejoice, and let us give him the glory. For the time has come for the wedding feast of the Lamb, and his bride has prepared herself. 8 She has been given the finest of pure white linen to wear.” For the fine linen represents the good deeds of God’s holy people.” (Rev 19:6-8). I started to sense what he saw in a vision when he was there almost two thousand years ago. John saw that his presence on Patmos made it a bridal chamber, that the area of the 7 churches to whom he wrote was also a bridal chamber, and the whole cosmos is one vast bridal chamber where the people of God are being prepared for their marriage to Jesus. God the Father’s plan is for the whole of creation to be filled with endless and indestructible marital bliss. And he will bring this to pass because of the power of the blood of the Lamb (Rev 7:14; 12:11).
The blood of the cross is the foundation upon which the Father builds his plans for eternity. John proclaimed Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Jesus has taken away the sin of the world. In Jesus the world has been reunited with God, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:19), “For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, 20 and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.” (Col 1:20). In Christ the victory of God is already complete, even if it is not yet completely manifest to the world. The universe as we know it will be a new creation free from all mourning, crying and pain (Rev 21:4). The “Bride, the wife of the Lamb” (Rev 21:9) will radiate the glory of Christ throughout the whole of created reality forever without distortion of dimness. All because, remember my Jerusalem encounter, of the beautifying power of the cross. The prophetic Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky rightly sensed, “Beauty will save the world.” The beauty of the Lord Jesus limitlessly radiates the truth, goodness, justice of God.
When Christ cried out from the cross ““It is finished”” (John 19:30) he used a word which conveys the sense of accomplishment and is related to a word often translated “perfected” (John 17:23; 2 Cor 12:9; Heb 2:10; 5:9; 10:14; 12:2). And the tense of the verb used means “completed for all time”. John’s commentary on the death of Jesus goes on to help us understand what has been accomplished. “But one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. 35 He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth—that you also may believe.” (John 19:34-35). John’s testimony in his Gospel is often a highly symbolic one.
The water that flows from the pierced side of Jesus symbolises the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (compare John 4:13-14; 7:37-39) which will soon rush through the Church into the world. Water is a symbol of the Spirit’s power to make us holy (John 22:16; 1 Cor 6:11; Tit 3:5). But water came out of Christ after blood. The shed blood of the cross is God’s public testimony to the world that its sins have been paid for and cleansing is available in Christ. The blood of Christ “cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). This is very powerfully conveyed in the words of Revelation about the saints of God, us, ““These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (7:14).
Paul sums up this amazing purifying dynamic with his bridal imagery, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might make her holy, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” (Eph 5:25-27). To ordinary human sight the death of Jesus was plain ugly, “no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isa 53:2). But in the sight of the Father Christ’s death was the most beautiful thing he has ever seen (Ps 116:15). This death beautifies us in Christ into an incorruptible immortal existence. In the resurrection, “those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.” (Dan 12:3).
Since such extraordinary things are true for us, why does the life of the Church, so often, seem so ordinary? Some preachers speak so often about money you could be forgiven for thinking that the spirit of the Great Prostitute of Revelation has invaded the Bride of Christ (Rev 17:1-5). And in some places, it has! What is missing? The answer is both simple and difficult. Jesus was perfected in his power to beautify the Church through suffering, and the Church grows into this beauty as she shares “the fellowship of his sufferings” (Phil 3:10). We have minds capable of seeing the glory of God in all things when we share the mind which took Jesus to suffer on the cross and on into his glory.
Many Christians love Paul’s exposition in Romans on the cry “Abba Father” and how “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ”. But few of us treasure his next words; “provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” (Romans 8:16-17). In consoling the Ephesians from his prison cell the apostle shares deep wisdom, “So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.” (Eph 3:13). Peter too understood these ways of Christ, “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:6-7); “But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.” (1 Peter 4:13-14).
Since “suffering is not the cost of glory but the way of glory” (Bingham) it is suffering with Christ that opens our hearts to the spiritual realm of beauty. This vision of beauty is something Christian people can share in together. It is a vision represented by the diagram below.
The origin of this diagram is very important. There used to be in Perth a 24/7 prayer centre called The Furnace. Its inside walls were plastered with paintings, poems and prayers and a table stood by covered with art supplies. I am not in the habit of drawing, but on this occasion, I was drawn to pick up some pencils and sketch. That I began with a cross wasn’t very surprising, I have long desired to be a “prophet of the cross”; but it was what happened next that surprised me.
I found myself placing a red dot at those points on the cross corresponding to where Jesus was pierced by nails or thorns; his head, hands, feet and side, the red spots represented his blood (John 19:2, 34; 20:20). Then I was moved to connect the bloody points with straight lines, the result appears as a prism. The diagram was completed when I drew white light proceeding through the prism from the left and emerging from the right in all the colours of the rainbow. The white rays symbolise the holy light of God (1 John 1:5), and the spectrum the glory of God (Rev 4:3). When God reveals his holiness we see his glory. Many people would call this revival. There were however other layers to this image which I hadn’t yet seen.
Some time after receiving the rainbow diagram I felt the Lord asking me to seek help in setting up a website that could receive all my teaching articles plus those of other people from Perth whose work I trusted as Christ-centred. This leading was confirmed when a very technically gifted man asked to see me and offered his services wherever I thought he might be able to help. The result was http://cross-connect.net.au/ . With the spectrum diagram on the Home page of the website I sensed a more practical prophetic application of its symbolism.
As I continued to pray about the prism at the centre of the image, I sensed that it had to do with a network of people across the city of Perth. In principle this could be any suburb, town, city, state or nation. This would not be a formal or organisational network but connections God would sovereignly bring about. The bloody points of the cross represent men and women, to quote Paul, who bear in their bodies “the marks of Jesus” (Gal 6:7). These are men and women who know what it is like to have been “crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:20) and who can authentically testify with Paul, “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.” (2 Cor 4:10-12). These are mature Christian people who in real ways have suffered for Christ and been purged of selfish-ambition. They are holy people who are no tempted by money, sex or power. The Holy Spirit can sovereignly bring such people together in partnerships that can be entrusted with the manifest glory of God. some would call this “revival”.
Such networks would naturally involve pastors to equip God’s people for works of service (Eph 4:13). But since the ministry of the people of God is in “all things” that belong to Jesus (Eph 4:10), we should expect to see such holy relationships of unity for the glory of God amongst believers in politics, the arts, media, law, science, education, business and so on. the controlling passion of such groups must be, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Hab 2:14). We know that this is “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). This is a great vision, but for its progressive realisation much needs to be put to death.