In her book
Stepping Up: A Journey through the Psalms of Ascent, Beth Moore describes her reaction to hearing of a South African prostitute converted during her study
Breaking Free.
When I heard the story, I wept. That, Beloved, is one reason I love Jesus so much. He is the ultimate Prince Charming to every woman, especially the one who forgot she was Cinderella. He looked with loving eyes on that lifeless woman, knowing all she'd ever said and done. He gazed beneath her sin into the brokenness that caused her to devalue herself so thoroughly. He'd given His whole life for her and wanted her to know that she was worth it to Him. Christ, the Spotless One and the Righteous King, saw beauty beneath her wounded, weathered exterior and sought to make her His own.
Cinderella? Let's take a look at what Ephesians 2:1-3 says about us.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in
which you once walked, following the course of this world, following
the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in
the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Before Christ, this passage makes clear that we have no beauty in ourselves. Nowhere in this passage is there a fairy tale image of a rough-around-the-edges princess just waiting to be recognized. She's dead, a daughter of disobedience, a child of wrath.
The passage continues by giving us children of wrath hope. Despite our sin and deadness, God "being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, made us alive together with Christ" (v. 4-5).
God loves us because of His mercy, not because of our beauty. And this truth is what sets captives free, not a man-centered notion that we are somehow worthy of God's love apart from Christ.
Comments (1)
One might argue that because God has chosen us in Him before the foundations of the world that he does see us as beautiful even while we live as children of wrath. Just because we may live a portion of our lives unaware of the truth of the Gospel does not mean that we were ever any less his children. For this reason, I think God looks at his elect with loving eyes, even before they are aware they are his elect. But you are right, its not simply because we are beautiful that he redeems us. For God, the entire work of salvation is done, He sees us as we will be because He is not tied to time and space. Our future exisistence is a now thing for Him. So when he redeems children of wrath he does see beauty in them, but it is beauty that he has given them because we are his workmanship, because he chose us holy in Him eons before we ever walked the earth...n stuff