God-centered Living

Introduction: The Beauty That Changes Everything

The Gospel is incredibly useful. What could be more useful or practical than a perfect solution to humanity’s greatest problem: our sin, our guilt, and separation from God? Through Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, God has provided everything necessary to save us from our terrible problem of sin. This is good news, not just in theory, but in effect. It forgives. It saves. It restores. In that sense, the Gospel is wonderfully useful.

But if we stop there, we’ve missed something crucial.

The Gospel is not just useful; it’s beautiful. And its beauty is not something added to its effectiveness like a cherry on top. Its beauty really is the point. Its beauty is the power.

Because the Gospel doesn’t merely solve a problem; it reveals a person. And in that person—Jesus Christ—we see the very beauty and glory of God.

“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature…” (Hebrews 1:3)

The Gospel is not just about getting us out of hell and into heaven. It is about bringing us to God—to see Him, to know Him, to behold His glory, and to treasure His beauty.

“For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6)

What Scripture often calls “glory,” we might today call beauty. For the purposes of this article, I am using the two terms almost interchangeably, because I think it can help us picture a bit easier what is meant by the doctrine of the glory of God. In fact, many definitions of glory use the word “beauty” to try to explain it.  It’s not always easy to define, but we all feel its pull. Beauty is what all of us are constantly chasing, whether we realize it or not. Beauty is valuable. And it’s not just one kind of value among many; it is really the end of value itself. It is where value comes to a point and rests on something. It is the peculiar quality of a thing that stirs our hearts and satisfies our longings. Something enjoyable in and of itself. The beauty of something ultimately is the value of it. Beauty is what we are after in the midst of all of our pursuits.

Beauty, then, is not a means to something else. Beauty is the thing we seek for its own sake. It is not something we use. It is something we enjoy. It is the end of value, the destination of desire.

The Gospel is not just an extremely useful means to help us get to some greater beauty—something more satisfying. The Gospel is both the greatest means and end for us. It is our greatest help, which also reveals our greatest object of desire.

In the Gospel, God is saying: Here I am. There is nothing in the world more beautiful than me.

So the question we must ask is this:

Are we coming to Jesus simply because He is useful to us, or because He is also beautiful to us?

It’s important to acknowledge that we all basically first come to Jesus for His usefulness. We come because we’re broken, burdened, afraid, or guilty, and we need help. That’s not wrong. That’s how we receive grace. But, we’re invited to much more. We’re invited beyond rescue into wonder, beyond need into love. Maturity doesn’t mean needing Jesus less; it means seeing more of Him and wanting Him more deeply for who He is, not just for what He provides.

As we progress through our Christian life, are we following Him as a means to some other end, or are we seeing Him as both the means and end Himself?

The difference is not merely philosophical. It’s essential, and transformational.

Because the Christian life is not merely a matter of right belief or good behavior. At its core, it is a life of seeing. Of beholding. Of treasuring.

This is what sets the Christian life apart. We are not just people who’ve agreed to a set of doctrines; we are people who have seen something. Or more precisely, we’ve seen someone. That sight—spiritual, but unmistakable and real—is what changes us. And we long for more and more.

“And 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 Corinthians 3:18)(emphasis added).

This is what I want to explore: that the Christian life is not primarily about belief in a set of facts but about the spiritual enjoyment of a person—of the beauty of that person. It is essentially not a battle to perform, but a battle to behold. A fight to see. A long, daily pursuit of a clearer vision of Christ—because to the degree that we see Him as beautiful as He really is, we are changed.

Beauty and Value: What We’re Really After

To understand why beauty matters so much in the Christian life, we need to try to grasp what beauty actually is, and why it holds such power over our hearts.

Beauty is hard to define, but unmistakable when experienced. It stops us. It stirs us. Fills us with longing for more. It’s what makes our spine tingle when a song hits the right chord, or gasp when we stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or made our hearts leap when we first laid eyes on the love of our lives.

Beauty is what fills us with joy and makes us feel alive. It is a sort of strange reality that is hard to put our finger on, but we know it when we see it. It’s what we live for—when value is no longer merely useful, but fully enjoyed. When something ceases to be a means to something else and simply becomes the thing you want to linger on and behold—that’s beauty. It is enjoying value itself.

This may be a little philosophical but bear with me. What do I mean by relating beauty to value?

Everything else we pursue in life involves transactions of value. They are ultimately just stepping stones to something deeper. Why do we work? To get money. Why do we want money? For what it can give us. And why do we want what it gives us? Because we believe it will lead us to something that is beautiful—something that stirs our hearts and satisfies our longings. Something enjoyable in and of itself. Everything else are means. But beauty? Beauty is the end.

Think about it:
Why do we chase love? Because we want to enjoy the beauty of another person.
Why do we vacation? To enjoy the beauty of a place.
Why do we watch films or listen to music? To enjoy the beauty of storytelling, of sound, of meaning.
Why do we obsess over physical appearance or personal image? Because we want to possess beauty—or at least reflect it.

Whether we call it beauty, wonder, or glory, we are always chasing it. We obsess over it. We can’t get enough of it. At times, if we’re honest, it really bothers us that we can’t get it in full measure. We always want more. We’re often anxious and restless due to our inability to acquire it and interact with it to our heart’s content. C.S. Lewis observed, “We do not merely want to see beauty… we want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves.”

It is a peculiar sort of urge that we have, but it is not a frivolous or secondary thing. It’s what we live for.

Which is why it matters so deeply how we view Jesus.

If we see Him only as useful, we will treat Him like every other transaction in our lives, as a means to get something else. But if we see Him as beautiful, we will begin to treat Him as the end. Not a bridge to some other blessing, but the blessing itself.

All beauty has a common thread. It’s clueing us into something. It has an aroma of a feast we’re hungry for but never actually partaken in. It hums familiar notes of a song we love but have never actually heard. It all relates in some way. An infinite web of parts relating to a whole. Eventually, all beauty converges on a single point. And that point is God—the source of all beauty, the Creator of all things, The Giver of life, the Lord of glory.

There are innumerable places and things of beauty in the world, but they all contain only a piece of beauty. In the Gospel, the infinite storehouse of beauty is concentrated into one story and furthermore into one person—the man Jesus Christ.

There is nowhere else but there to find the beauty we are all searching for.

Seeing Jesus as truly beautiful changes everything.

The Gospel — Art, Melody, Poetry

The Gospel is not just about extremely helpful news; it is a masterpiece.

Yes, it is useful. It solves our biggest problem of sin and brings forgiveness, justification, reconciliation, and eternal life. But if we only see the Gospel as a kind of divine efficiency—a perfectly structured solution—we’ve missed its heart. Because God did not just communicate news; He revealed beauty.

There are two ways to communicate something: the functional and the beautiful. There are ways to simply depict a picture, or relay a sound, or convey a message for clarity and conciseness. And then there are ways to express art through a picture, make melody or rhythm through sound, or to write in poetry. In the first way, the goal is accuracy. The goal is function. In the latter way, the goal is beauty. The raw elements of image or sound or language are arranged in such a way as to create beauty out of that which is otherwise direct and merely functional. The goal is to inspire feelings of joy through the communication of things or ideas. And it’s possible for something to serve both function and beauty. There is a way to communicate clearly and accurately but in such a way beauty is apprehended in the seeing, reading, or hearing.

To demonstrate these two forms of communication, let’s use an example of weather:

In talking about the weather, you can say, “The temperature is currently 86 degrees, with southwest winds at 15–20 miles per hour, and a 90% chance of thunderstorms.” That’s a weather report. It’s precise, accurate, and helpful.

Or you can say, “The leaves are restless, whispering warnings beneath a heavy sky. The warm breeze hums like a string pulled tight. Thunder growls beyond the hills.”

Same reality. One is functional. The other is poetic. One is communicating facts, and the other is seeking to invoke emotion.

The Gospel is both true and moving. Both fact and beauty. Both report and poem. And yet, the story isn’t told with poetic flair; it’s mostly straightforward, informational, and historical. The beauty isn’t in ornate language. It’s in what the story reveals. The art and the beauty of it is not perceived in the natural way that we intake beauty. The Gospel is a work of art, but not one we can see with our physical eyes. The Gospel is a glorious melody, but not one we can hear with our physical ears. The Gospel is as poetry but not in the way that our physical brains normally read it. There is a different type of sight and a different type of hearing at play. It is of a spiritual nature. It is the eyes and ears of our hearts which are capturing the beauty. The natural eye does not perceive it.

In Ephesians 1:18, the apostle Paul talks about the eyes of our hearts being enlightened. In 2 Corinthians 4:6, which I quoted earlier, it says about believers that God has shown in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.

Paul also writes about the lack of spiritual sight and spiritual understanding when He says:

“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14)

And in 2 Corinthians 4:4 is says that Satan has “blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ..”

It is not as though the message of the Gospel is so complex that people cannot comprehend what it is about. Even children can grasp it. But in our natural human capacities, we are not able perceive its intrinsic value. This is why many can hear the Gospel and walk away unmoved. They may understand its parts but never see its beauty.

Our natural eyes and ears see it, hear it, and understand the message, but it is the spiritual eyes and ears which make it come alive for us and make our hearts dance. When that happens, our soul takes its basic elements and paints for us a stunning work of art, sings to us our favorite song, flutters our hearts with its poetic elegance, and fundamentally changes us.

This is why the Gospel is called the power of God. The power is not in the facts alone, but in the beauty that the facts awaken for us.

So, it is vitally important to analyze how we interact with the Gospel.

What do we see and hear in it?

Is it just a nice story? Is it our ticket out of hell? Is it boring to us?

Or is it a thing of sheer beauty?

Jesus — The Beauty of God Made Visible

The Gospel is beautiful, because Jesus is beautiful. He is not just the messenger; He is the message embodied.

Jesus is the Word of God. He is the clearest revelation of what God is like. To see the beauty of the Gospel is to see the beauty of God in the face of Christ. The cross is not only where sins are paid for; it’s where the very heart of God is put on display—His justice and mercy, His holiness and love, His power and humility. And to the eyes of the heart, it is breathtakingly beautiful.

The good news is not merely what He did. The good news is Him.

This is why Hebrews 1:3 calls Jesus “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature.” He doesn’t just tell us about God’s glory; He radiates it. He is God’s beauty in tangible form. To look at Jesus is to see what God is like.

The apostle John echoes this:

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

In Jesus, we don’t just get forgiveness; we get God. His life, His death, His resurrection—they’re not just redemptive actions, but divine self-revelation. Through the cross, we see justice and mercy embrace. We see power wrapped in humility. We see fierce holiness alongside tender compassion. We see a King who conquers by dying, and a Savior who reigns by serving.

This is beauty. Not just in abstract, but in personal form.

And this is what changes us—not information about Jesus, but beholding Jesus Himself. Not merely hearing that He’s good, but tasting it. Not just knowing He’s worthy, but seeing His value.

The Gospel isn’t meant to stop at theological understanding; it’s meant to lead to worship and wonder.

And that wonder is what fuels transformation.

This is why the Christian life must revolve around looking to Jesus. Not only when we first believe, but every day after. We never move past the need to behold Him. His beauty is not just what saves us; it’s what sanctifies us. Beholding his beauty is what makes us more like Him.

The disciplines and activities of the Christian life—reading scripture, praying, fellowship with believers, worshiping—are not boxes to check. They are windows. They are opportunities to clear the fog, to lift our eyes, to see Him clearly, and to fix our gaze there.

Seeing and Becoming — The Fight to Behold

Transformation doesn’t begin with effort. It begins with vision, like a traveler who doesn’t move until he sees where he’s going. But once he sees clearly, the journey begins.

This is the surprising simplicity—and the deep challenge—of the Christian life. We are not primarily changed by trying harder, but by seeing better.

“And 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 Corinthians 3:18)

This verse is not about a one-time moment; it’s about an ongoing reality. As we behold Christ, we are changed. Not by force. Not by willpower. But by worship. This is the heart of sanctification. Sanctification is really just the process of seeing the beauty of justification in all of its many facets.

This challenges how we often think about spiritual growth. Many of us assume that the Christian life is mainly about doing: resisting temptation, reading our Bible, serving others, keeping our behavior in check. And while obedience and self-denial absolutely matter, they are not the engine of change; they are the result of something deeper: beholding.

We don’t grow by trying harder alone. We grow by seeing better.

We are constantly tempted to fix our eyes on lesser beauties. To be captivated by what is loud and shiny and fleeting. To drift from true wonder into distraction.

And willpower and discipline alone will never be able to bear the same real fruit as beholding His beauty. Beauty is what really stirs our hearts. When the will tries to obey without affection, it grinds. But when the heart is captured by glory, obedience flows freely.

We must put ourselves where the beauty of Christ is most visible. We “lay ourselves in the way of allurement,” as Jonathan Edwards once wrote. We draw near to the Word not as a rulebook, but as a window. We pray not just for answers or direction, but to see more of Jesus. We gather with God’s people to sing and speak truth that stirs the heart. We slow down to notice beauty in creation, in grace, in the Gospel—because all of it points back to Him.

This isn’t about chasing emotional highs. It’s about cultivating spiritual clarity. It’s about fixing our gaze on Christ until more of His beauty shines through, and our life will continually bear the fruit of becoming like the beauty we see.

The greatest saints, who have lived awe-inspiring lives of service, have not been those with the most willpower. They are those who have seen something beautiful enough to trade everything else away in search of more of it.

Beauty is what propels the life of the believer.

We fix our gaze on what we find most beautiful—
And we become what we see.

So What Do You See?

We are all looking for something. Something worth trading our time, our effort, and our energy for. Something valuable. Something beautiful.

We are always beholding something. Our hearts are never still. We are drawn toward what we believe is beautiful. And in beholding, we become shaped—sometimes slowly, sometimes without even realizing it—by what we see and love most.

Jesus is not just useful; He is the beauty behind all beauty. The Gospel is not just a solution to our worst problem. It is the unveiling of our greatest treasure.

So what are you gazing at?

Is Jesus just useful to you, or is He beautiful to you?

Are you coming to Jesus just to get something from Him, or are you coming to see Him?

Because the Christian life is not primarily about trying harder or doing better. It’s about seeing.
And seeing changes everything.

We fix our gaze on what we find most beautiful—
And we become what we see.

“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8)

“One thing have I asked of the Lord that I will seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple.” (Psalm 27:4)(emphasis added)

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the ESV® Bible.