Beautifully Dressed

Read: Revelation 21:1-7

I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. Revelation 21:2

IN WORD

The church has flaws. That’s not news to anyone. We see it, and the world sees it. We are quirky and full of issues. We are the spiritual body of Christ, and sometimes just as wounded as the physical body was. And we make no claims of perfection.

But we are His. He has been preparing His people for ages. He has declared us clean, and in His eyes, we are. He is dressing us for a wedding, and we are already beautiful to Him. And when we appear—when the Holy City full of all His followers of every nation is unveiled—we will be beautiful to everyone with eyes to see. We have been made fully ready for forever. Perfection is in the eye of the beholder, and our beholder defines who we are.

Sometimes the pain of our present and the flaws we can’t seem to escape are more persuasive than God’s picture of us is. That’s because we can see the pain and the flaws much more clearly; they are in our face every day. We don’t see that we are being beautifully dressed for a divine husband as a bride is prepared for her day of glory. We have His Word that says so, but the visible evidence seems scarce. The solution to that is to value His assessment more than we value our own. We certainly let the words of critics stick to us. Why can’t His words stick more firmly? They should; He knows much more than our critics do. Every wound we’ve suffered from a human being can be undone by one word from His mouth. He knows who we really are.

IN DEED

We grow into whatever we envision. If we envision ourselves as unworthy, inept spiritual failures, we will remain stuck in that vision. But that is not His opinion of us, and His is the one that counts. We dare not contradict Him. If we envision ourselves—corporately as a church and individually as human beings—as a beautiful bride dressed specifically for Him, we will grow into that vision. We will be transformed. And the wedding day will be glorious.

ADDITIONAL READING: Isaiah 62:1-5

The church is the only institution supernaturally endowed by God.

CHARLES COLSON