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Marriage & Beauty
When God escorted Eve to Adam and gave her hand in marriage to him, she was undoubtedly beautiful, radiant and royal, for God created nothing contrary to his own goodness. Created quite like no other, her appearance must have been stunning. Full of grace and charm, glowing in the splendor of holiness, Eve's dignified approach highlighted her naked excellence. Adam rejoiced as he beheld his beautiful bride, proclaiming like a marriage vow that they were one.
Every couple re-enacts the same encounter. A man and woman, now husband and wife, retreat to a romantic hide-a-way to create their own paradise. The tension of nervous excitement mounts as they anticipate their encounter. For the first time, like Adam, the man gazes upon his lovely, unadorned bride, ripe for love. He surveys her divine endowments awed by the charms of God's grace. He sings his devotion “we are one.” “My lover is mine and I am his,” she echoes. As they celebrate their union, heaven implores “Eat, O friends, and drink; drink your fill O lovers.”
Ever since Adam beheld his bride, men have extolled feminine beauty and sought companions to match their own standards. In his wisdom God considered it good for men to desire a woman, and to adorn her with a combination of both apparent and subtle allures with which to captivate him. Perhaps God designed man's desire for a woman's beauty as a type for Christ's ardent love for his bride, the Church, whom he regards with special favor.
Nevertheless, it is apparent that God does not esteem what is considered valuable to men and women: “man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). Rather, the “unfading beauty of gentle and quiet spirit is of great worth in God's sight” (1 Peter 3:4, 5). God delights in choosing what is unloved and unworthy. He emphasized to Israel, for example, that its selection as God's people was not based on any inherent attraction (Ezekiel 16:5). Likewise, Paul admonished the Christians in Corinth for their misguided estimation of worldly values, and reminded them of their humble status when God chose them (1 Corinthians 1:26). It is by grace, that God courts and unites to his people – not any so-called beauty or virtue they possess. It is only by grace that beauty is in the eye of the divine beholder.
Even so, Christ is in the process of ‘beautifying' his bride, the Church (Ephesians 5:26, 27). As Paul wrote, God “predestined us to be conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Romans 8:29). In other words, we have a pre-destiny to be conformed to the glory of Christ, and the Holy Spirit is the agent of God's conforming process (2 Thessalonians 2:14, 15).
Husbands are called to imitate the example of the Lord Jesus who loved the Church in order to give himself a lovely bride (Eph 5:25). He does not love us because we are worthy or beautiful, but to make them lovely. In the marriage relationship, men have distorted the process for the condition. In other words, the husband is to love the wife to, in effect, make her beautiful in spirit – not because she is beautiful (i.e. in body by societal standards). Husbands are to imitate the example of Christ who sacrificed himself for the ultimate good of his people. In the same way, the husband is to bless and serve their wives, and to model and reveal God to them. As husbands thus progress in love for them, then their wives will be attracted to follow Christ. The result will be an obedient and truly beautiful bride.
To model the divine perspective, husbands are to love their wives with an unqualified, unmerited love, i.e. based on grace. He is not blind to his wife's imperfections (physical or otherwise), but continues to love her as the youthful beauty fades. He sees beyond the body to the spirit, and looks with eyes full of grace. He sees what used to be and, with God's power and for his glory, what will become.
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