Now you may be reading this article with many misgivings. Perhaps you suffer from a physical limitation or a feature you consider a deformity. I pray that you have been encouraged by the Bible’s perspective on everlasting inner beauty. I also think you could be cheered by the words of one woman who knows such challenges better than I.

“Suffering keeps swelling our feet so that earth’s shoes won’t fit,” Joni Eareckson Tada writes. “My atrophied legs and swollen ankles, curled fingers and limp wrists are visual aids in a children’s Sunday school lesson on Isaiah 40:6,8: ‘All flesh is grass . . . the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever’ (KJV).”

Joni is a woman who exudes inner beauty, even though she is—wheelchair and all—a pretty woman on the outside. I’ve been to several dinners when she has blessed the participants with her fine singing, leading the group in resonant old hymns. She is fascinating to watch. Her joy commands your attention. But as a quadriplegic, Joni admits she is looking forward to the fulfillment of Isaiah 35:4-6:

Say to those who have an anxious heart,
“Be strong; fear not!
Behold, your God
will come with vengeance,
with the recompense of God.
He will come and save you.”
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then shall the lame man leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.
       
“For me, verses like this are not cross-stitched promises nostalgic of a vague, nebulous and distant era,” she writes.  “It’s part of the hope I’m already stepping into, the time when Jesus will ‘transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body,’ (Philippians 3:21). I like that part about new bodies.

“But my hope isn’t centered around a glorious body. It goes far beyond that.”

It’s a mystery what awaits the Christian in that resurrected body but I’m fairly sure that no matter how glorious these new bodies will be, or how brilliant our inner beauty will be when sin is completely absent, we will be utterly unaware of it all when we stand in heaven. Instead, I think our attention will be elsewhere—we will be utterly captivated by the beauty of the Lamb.

We have no description of what Jesus looked like when he lived on earth, but the prophet Isaiah had foretold that He “had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him; nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2 NIV). The apostle John, however, had a vision of the ascended Lord, and He was both breathtakingly beautiful and terrifying in His grandeur:

I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone “like a son of man,” dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” (Revelation 1:12-18 NIV)