Introduction

“A Painting has the tremendous potential to mirror what you believe in and what’s to come, once expressed with boldness.” (Hannes Tischhauser)

On a recent retreat I had a wonderful sense of the Father’s great pleasure in the Word as his co-creator (John 1:1, 3). As I viewed the rugged landscape and harshly lined gorges of North West Australia God’s delight in forming them was palpable. Almost simultaneously I sensed the Lord’s satisfaction in our physiological functioning as the work of his hands (Isa 64:8). Such insights illuminate our motivation as Christians – we are committed to environmental management because the constitution of the world praises God (Ps 19:1-6), we will pray for the sick for the healthy form of the body brings God pleasure, and so on. Sensitivity to the presence of God is relatively simple in the wide open spaces of the desert, but what about our awareness of the Lord as inhabitants of a city?

Whilst in scripture the godless arrogance of the great cities, Nineveh, Babylon, Rome, looms large, the history of creation ends with a city. “And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” (Rev 21:2). The heavenly city is God’s greatest creation exceeding the splendour of Eden because the final city unites the work of God and man[1]. It is the artistry of our lives in union with the hand of God that will fashion the final landscape of eternity. This is a spiritual vision that must engage our whole being, body, soul and spirit. The goal of our working together with God in building eternity is an all consuming passion.

God the Craftsman

Humanity was created as the highest source of the divine joy, “when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30 then I (wisdom) was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily filled with delight, rejoicing before him always, 31 rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.” (Prov 8:29-31). Only after the making of men and women did God declare of his own work, “very good” (Gen 1:31).

Part of God’s purpose in creating humanity in his image was to reveal to Adam that he was an object of infinitely desirable beauty. If he had entered into this awareness from the Lord the natural reflex of Adam’s deepest being would have been to adore the Creator. Such adoration would have been the fountainhead of a deep longing to submit to the brilliance of God’s handiwork (Job 34:19; Pss111:7; Isa 5:12) in fashioning his own inner life.

Adam however could only enter into the fullness of God’s joy when God’s work in some way reached completion. This was made possible by the creation of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, to which he was forbidden access (Gen 2:9, 17). The possibility of Adam choosing to eat or not eat from the tree was absolutely indispensible to the divine plan. Whilst all that God had made was “very good” it was not yet eternal. The threat of death entering into creation through human disobedience (Gen 2:17) meant nothing was yet immortal[2] or the fullness of “perfection”[3]. Humanity’s sole avenue to reach completion in the image of God lay in an act of will. If the only purely evil thing is an evil will, the only purely good thing is a good will. If Adam had chosen to submit to God’s Word and refuse the temptation to eat of the tree of knowledge the fullness of the divine pleasure would have descended upon him, and so he would have been glorified/made perfect. When in violation to the command of God he rebelled and chose evil, his will became fatally corrupted[4].

Instead of sharing in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4) humanity entered into a spiritual death (Eph 2:1). Through hardness of heart (Eph 4:18) human beings ceased to be sensitive to the fact that they are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:14) and reflect God’s marvellous artistry. Adoration of the true and living God is no longer a normal part of human life (Rom 1:19, 21). The sin of man however could never frustrate the creativity of his Maker.

Wedding Preparations

The old covenant speaks of Israel as the Bride of God[5]; this however is ultimately a revelation of the End. “In that day …4 when the Lord shall have …cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning. 5 Then the Lord will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day, and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory there will be a canopy. (Isa 4:2, 4-5). The “canopy” of which this text speaks is a huppah, a word which means the “bridal chamber” where bridegroom and bride come together in love and union (Ps 19:5; Joel 2:16). When Israel’s will is finally fully subjected to YAHWEH as Bride to Husband everything will be filled with glory (Isa 6:3; Hab 2:14). The “Lord of the whole earth” (Mic 4:13; Zech 4:14) shall have a Bride through whom and by whom all things shall be filled with his intimate presence[6]. The entire cosmos will be beautified through marital bliss.

History will be consummated in such a way that all peoples are included in unutterable joy, “they (the nations and their kings) shall come up with acceptance on my altar, and I will beautify my beautiful house….the wealth of the nations…to beautify the place of my sanctuary” (Isa 60:7, 11, 13 cf. 61:13). Nothing within Israel’s history ever approximated these visions of the End until her Husband came in the flesh.

The Bridegroom is Lord of Beauty

Deep within Jesus’ consciousness is an awareness of his own betrothed status, ““Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”” (Matt 9:15). This intimate awareness is the motive of his suffering love, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…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). The secret of how Jesus will perfect the Bride lies in the absolute submission of his will to the Father.

When Jesus prays in Gethsemane, ““Yet not what I will, but what you will.”” (Mark 14:36), he is making a decision of such depth that the will of man and the will of God are perfectly one[7]. That sharing in the absolute goodness of his life that God had always planned for humanity is being enacted within Jesus’ complete submission to the Father. The result is that the satisfaction of the Father overflows into an outpouring of joy[8] that raises Christ from the dead and sets him on high as “Lord of all” (Acts 10:36).

When the apostle John hears, “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever!”” (Rev 5:13) we are witnessing an apocalyptic insight of cosmic proportions. The inhabitants of heaven adoringly worship Christ the King with ecstatic jubilation as they witness the unsurpassable wisdom of the plan of God in completely fulfilling all that was ever been offered through the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Redeemed creation responds in its innermost being with honour and thankfulness to God for everything has been reconciled through the blood of the Lamb[9]. The Lordship of Jesus means nothing less than the immortalising of all things in the all consuming delight of God [10]. Amazingly, this new creating will involve the Bride of Christ, “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph 1:23).

Such a revelation inspires in us an utterance that can only be expressed in the language of matrimonial love; “The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.”” (Rev 22:17). It stimulates in us what God has always been seeking from the beginning, that adoration of his goodness that flows into submission to his will that unites us with his own divine nature (1 Cor 6:17; 2 Pet 1:4). Within such a vision it becomes manifest that subjection to Jesus is the glory of all things [11]; and that it is given to those who willingly submit to their Lord and Husband[12]to see that everything already sparkles with the glory of Christ[13].

Bridal Love Images Final Restoration

In a picture I see the Lord opening up of a treasure box to expose a multitude of sparkling precious stones – this is an image of the beauty of his Bride, the church[14]. The apocalyptic portrait of golden and bejewelled city of New Jerusalem is a prophetic figure of how the Lord sees the beauty of his people, the church. From Eden on[15] the treasures of the earth were created as a Word from God about the eternal splendour of his chosen ones[16].

As a treasure box is radiant with all the colours of the rainbow so the body of Christ is full of the spectral colours of the glory of God. All the different colours of races/cultures that the Word has created for the pleasure of the Father are called to flow together as one people, one Bride, for the glory of God. Only a unified Body can paint our cities clean with the blood of Christ for in the present time only the Church can image the reconciliation and restoration of all things (Acts 3:21).

Of Jesus prayers for the oneness of his people in John 17 this may be said, “It is the divine unity of love that is referred to, all wills bowing in the same direction, all affections burning with the same flame, all aims directed to the same end – one blessed harmony of love.” (Milligan-Moulton) If beauty is the voice of glory, glory is released through the subjection of Bridal Love. Such united submission requires a specific prophetic revelation.

The Bridegroom is already dwelling with his beautiful Bride in her chamber of loving union (Isa 4:4-5), wherever Christ’s church is found a canopy that is spread over even the worldliest metropolis. Over the natural skylines of our cities can be seen a spiritual skyline of a city covered with the multicoloured streams of reconciled humanity walking as one in love. We who look and sound so ordinary on the outside are in Christ the painting and the tapestry of God’s eternal love already being crafted in superb creativity over the landscape of present history. This is the vision of God.

No wonder Paul prays, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Eph 3:20-21)

Conclusion

I began this paper with a quote from a professional artist, “A Painting has the tremendous potential to mirror what you believe in and what’s to come, once expressed with boldness.” (Hannes Tischhauser). This is surely the way the Lord always paints with our lives, and how we too should paint in the power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8; 4:31). To see work of the kingdom of God as a delightful presence opens up emboldening new insights.

We must ask God for the miraculous because miracles dazzlingly[17] reveal that subjection of creation to our beloved Lord[18] which is its glory. Such signs point forward to the End, when all things are subjected to the Son of the Father’s love (1 Cor 15:27-28) and the eternal joy this will bring. This is the joy of nothing less than the eternal marriage: “And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a Bride adorned for her husband.” (Rev 21:2).

Are you lacking an awareness of the marvellous nature of God’s creativity already at work in us as the Bride of Christ, has your testimony to Jesus become dull and predictable. Yet we are inside the bridal chamber and under the canopy of the most marvellous love, of what do we need to fear? Let us draw aside to seek the Lord allowing him to reveal to each of us our own colourful uniqueness in his eyes, and then in adoration and submission let us join together in painting the city he so loves.