“Is Jesus beautiful to you?
This little book has aimed to put forth the unmatched beauty of Christ. It is something the world does not see or understand, and something we often miss as well.
If Jesus is as unremarkable to you as some abstract brush strokes, then you are not viewing Him through the proper lens.
Scripture tells us that Jesus was not particularly physically attractive (Isa. 53:2), and yet His beauty shines forth from His character.
Jonathan Edwards explains that the concept of virtue is nothing other than the resplendence of beauty in moral beings:
‘Virtue is the beauty of the qualities and exercise of the heart, or those actions which proceed from them.’
As we have considered these virtues from Galatians 5 in the life of Christ, we have been really considering the beauty of Christ. We have seen the sterling quality of His heart, and the actions that proceed from that heart.
We have seen Him love the loveless, feed the hungry, heal the lame, forgive the reprobate, be gentle towards the lowly.
In all these ways, we share the astonishment of the crowds who remarked, ‘He has done all things well’ (Mark 7:37).
Therein lies true beauty.
In the person and work of Christ— a life that began in the squalor of a feeding trough and ended in the ignominy of public execution— all of the beauty and majesty that is God is made manifest.
Do you see it? Just like it takes the eye of the expert to appreciate a real Pollock, it takes the eye of faith to see the beauty of Christ.
We see it in His loving mercy, His joyful determination, His peaceful disposition, His patient instruction, His kind and tender care, His good and right ways, His faithful commitment, His gentle invitations, and His execution of self-control to attain our salvation.
And the wonderful thing is that when we take hold of this beautiful Saviour by faith, He will make us beautiful, too.
It starts gradually, but it does start now.
Paul writes that ‘we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another’ (2 Cor. 3:18).
When we look to our Saviour we start to look like our Saviour.
Paul goes on in that verse to explain how this is explicitly the work of the Holy Spirit: ‘For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit?’
Jesus sends His Spirit to us to be the great Converter, the One who takes the dust that we are in Adam (Gen. 3:19) and converts it slowly but surely to the very glory of Christ.”
–Jonathan Landry Cruse, The Character of Christ: The Fruit of the Spirit in the Life of Our Saviour (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2023), 148-149.
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