You shall be My witnesses . . . to the remotest part of the earth (Acts 1:8).
If we are faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ, what do others discover about Him? Many dimensions, including one rarely proclaimed: his beauty.
Your eyes will see the King in His beauty (Isaiah 33:17), the prophet wrote in a clear reference to the coming Messiah. David said the only thing he had asked God for was to dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD and to meditate in His temple (Psalm 27:4).
Maybe we neglect speaking of the beauty of Christ because we’ve bought the old eye-of-the-beholder line about beauty being subjective. In a forthcoming book, Darrow Miller will counter that idea, and will argue that the Great Commission includes bringing the beauty of Christ into the ugliness of the world.
As truth stands opposed to lies, and good to evil, so does beauty to the hideous. Just as there is an objective truth and goodness, so there is a tangible standard of beauty. Relativists claim that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” But absolute beauty has an objective standard: the glory and splendor of God. True beauty is permeated with truth and goodness just as God is beautiful, true, and good. . . .
The most beautiful thing you have ever seen is beautiful because it reflects God. The most hideous thing you have ever seen is hideous because it distorts God’s nature.
Since that is true, the world should be a more beautiful place as a result of our witness to Christ. Darrow says the results should include
- More beauty and less vulgarity
- More wholesomeness and less decadence
- More splendor and less dreariness
- More anticipation and less tediousness
- More harmony and less dissonance
Testimony about Jesus Christ includes witness to beauty because God is the author of beauty. Wherever we see beauty, the invisible God is becoming visible.
– Gary Brumbelow
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