True Beauty Is About Love, Not Looks
- Message Excerpt by
- Topics: Women, Manhood & Womanhood
Audio Transcript
We want to make Christ visible. The reason you have a body in this world that can be seen and touched is to use it to make the beauty of Christ known. And what was the beauty of Christ? Listen to Isaiah 53:
He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
The beauty of Christ is the beauty of love, not the beauty of looks. The beauty of Christ is the beauty of sacrifice, not the beauty of skin.
“The beauty of Christ is the beauty of love, not looks. It’s the beauty of sacrifice, not skin.”
God does not demand your body because he wants models for Mademoiselle or Planet Muscle; he wants models of mercy. Let me say that again. God says, “I want your body. I want you totally — your body, just like it is. I want your body, not as a model for Mademoiselle or Planet Muscle, but as a model of mercy. Whatever its shape, that’s the beauty to which I look.”
You find this all over the Bible. The beauty to which God looks is not external; it is the beauty of love, it’s the beauty of mercy, it’s the beauty of patience and kindness and meekness and joy and self-control. You can be big or little, tall or short, bad-complexioned, good-complexioned, hair falling out or hair staying in. You can be any kind of body and be absolutely gorgeous morally — as the Spirit brings you into conformity with Jesus.
Oh, that we could get this embedded in our young women, and increasingly, young men, because I do believe with all my heart, if we could embed this truth early on in our girls and boys, then the massive difficulties that we’re having with eating disorders would have at least a partial antidote. If we could just breed into our little ones, and then model for them, parents, how you dress and how you think about the body, and help them to monitor what they’re watching and doing, and then just drive it in day after day, there is one beauty that God cares about: do we love each other? Are we merciful?
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