The LORD’s Beauty

The LORD is beautiful. He alone is Immortal and dwells in unapproachable light. He who has this hope purifies himself. The glory of the LORD covers the earth as the waters cover the seas. The LORD’s Will will be done, and has been done. Jesus cried out God’s Will for the world, and said: “it is finished!” He made this cry in perfect tense. This is God’s beauty finished for the world in His dearly beloved Son. He has dwelled in this a se beauty, this plenitudinous pleroma before the foundations of the world; yea, before the foundations of the foundations. The LORD has descended as the Son of Man bringing down all of God’s beauty for us, and He did so veiled in the vulnerable humanity of a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths. He took that veil, His real humanity, to the cross; He died, was buried, rose again, and ascended. As the LORD ascended, He took our humanity with Him; as our humanity has become His humanity, just as He freely chose this to be so before the foundations of the world. As the LORD ascended, He spread all of God’s triune pleroma, all of God’s fullness between the throne room of heaven, and the stool of this earth. The LORD’s life is an indestructible life, this is an aspect of His beautiful life. The LORD is untouchable by filth and dirty rags, but He chose those rags, our fallen humanity for Himself; the LORD did this so that we might participate, by the grace of adoption, in His beautiful life of triune love. The LORD is pure. He is set-apart, but in such a way that His sacrosanctity has graciously come to include and not repel us. The LORD is the One for the many, even if the many receive Him not. He has received the many that the many might, by grace, become Him, as the many come to participate in His beautiful life of love in and through the vicarious and priestly humanity of the eternal Logos, the Almighty Son, who mediates for us between God and humanity; He is the Man, Christ Jesus.

Athanasian Reformed