The Power Of Beauty Series

"Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness." The power of

worship is in beauty. Beauty runs through the Bible, and we are

called upon to behold it over and over. There is the beautiful robe,

beautiful women, a beautiful situation, a beautiful heaven, a

beautiful crown, a beautiful gate, and even the beautiful feet of those

who proclaim the Gospel. There are numerous beauties in the

temple, and there is the beauty of wisdom.

Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest American preachers, came

to the conclusion, as he studied the Bible, that beauty was really at

the very heart of all theology. We tend to think of beauty as a

secular subject, but he made it the heart of his sacred theology. This

man changed the course of history in America, and he made beauty

the unifying theme of theology. He could see what most Christians

never notice. God is beautiful, and all that He does is beautiful, and

so the good and the beautiful are one. We could not love God if He

was not beautiful. If He was only powerful, He could force us to do

His will, but He could not force us to love Him. Love is a response

we can only give to beauty. If we had no revelation of God's beauty

in nature, or in the plan of redemption, we could not love God. God

could only win man's love by the power of beauty.

It works the other way also. Man is ugly in sin, and so it would

be hopeless for us to have fellowship with God, but Jesus became a

man, and by the beauty of His holiness, and the beauty of His

sacrifice, the way was opened for all to become beautiful, and,

thereby acceptable to God. Grasping the loveliness and the supreme

excellency of our Lord is the beginning of the victorious Christian

life. Those who do not see the beauty of Christ will not have the

motivating power to follow Him. They will be sidetracked

constantly by the superficial beauties of worldliness. All the fruits

of the spirit are expressions of the beauty of Jesus in human life.

Edwards said, "God is the foundation and the fountain of all

being and all beauty." Sin is a deformity and lack of beauty. All

have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That is, no one

measures up to the beauty God intended for them. They are all

defective. To be saved is to be restored to the place where you have

the right to begin the process of beautification. The doctrine of

sanctification is really a doctrine of beautification. To grow in

Christlikeness is the same as growing in beauty. Beauty is the

measure of God's presence, just as ugliness is the measure of God's

absence. If a man is insensitive to beauty, and can see no beauty in

life, or in people, he is alienated from God. The man who sees most

beauty, and is full of appreciation for it, is the man closest to God.

When all beauty is gone, and all of life is ugly, that is when people

take their own life, for the loss of all beauty is hell. In hell there will

be no beauty, and in heaven there will be nothing but beauty. One's

relationship to beauty in this life is the measure of the hell on earth,