You Look Beautiful
It’s been a fantastic weekend to live in London. Over a billion pairs of eyes all around the world have been fixed on the church a few miles from my house where Prince William married his long-term girlfriend Kate Middleton. After an incredible day of pomp, pageantry and parties, they are now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
The highlight of the whole royal wedding for me was the moment when Kate finished her walk down the aisle and stood next to William. He took one look at his bride and you leant over to encourage her. His words were easy to lip-read: “You look beautiful!” It was a touching moment.
After the wedding, I spent some time reading Psalm 45, the magnificent wedding song which describes the wedding between Jesus and the believers who make up his Church. Although originally written for the marriage of one of the kings of Judah and his foreign bride, the book of Hebrews quotes it in the New Testament and gives a commentary on what it truly conveys. We read in Hebrews 1:8-9 that it is a celebration of the holiness and perfection of Jesus the Bridegroom. It speaks not of the empty pomp and pageantry of a British constitutional monarch, but of the pure power and potency of the mighty King of the universe. It speaks not of a celebrity bride miles away on a television screen, but about you and about anyone else who says yes to Christ’s proposal.
There in Psalm 45 and verse 11, Jesus leans over to you and speaks the equivalent of William’s words to Kate. “The King is enthralled by your beauty,” the Psalmist writes. He declares: “The princess is all glorious on the inside; the clothing she wears is interwoven with gold.”
Jesus wants you to read those words today and to respond with the same evident delight as Kate did when she heard William’s. She didn’t refuse the compliment or try to please him by protesting that she was a commoner unworthy of his love. She didn’t point out her blemishes in a false show of humility. She just accepted his statement that he found her utterly beautiful, both inside and out.
You may protest that Kate is naturally beautiful, whereas there is little in your life which appears worthy of Jesus’ love. That sounds humble, but stop and think what that reaction implies about God’s message of salvation. It means that Sarah Burton, the chief designer at Alexander McQueen, is better at covering blemishes than God is through his Holy Spirit. It means that Sarah Burton’s pricey wedding dress does a better job than the priceless blood of Jesus.
No. When we close our mouths and simply listen to what Jesus tells us, we realise that the Gospel outclasses London’s fashion houses hands down. Because Jesus the Bridegroom has died for your sin and returned from the tomb to bring you new life through the Gospel, he can look at you right now and see the beauty of his holiness dwelling in you.
It’s time to stop protesting and it’s time to start listening. Jesus leans over to you as you read this and tells you, “You look beautiful!”
Now that’s what I call a royal wedding worth shouting about.
