When God created man He created him in His image. That man is created in God’s image gives us a key insight into what art is and what its purpose is. Man as an image of God is living art. His existence reveals what God is like. He is not God, but as you look at him, and learn about his behaviors, his roles, you learn about God. God is revealed through this earthly image. That man is a father teaches about fatherhood, and thus about God the Father. That man is a son teaches about God the Son. That man has an inner spirit teaches about the Holy Spirit of God. This is what this masterpiece by God is like. It is incredibly revelatory.
Yet God’s masterpiece does not end there. He unfolds his art not just through his creation of man but also through the history of man. The Gospel is a wonderful work of the highest of arts. God is spirit (John 4:24). He is unseen by our physical eyes—he is not in the realm of earthly images. Yet He takes on humanity, that is He enters into the world of earthly images, his own art. There is a strangeness to this. As strange as a human potter taking on the form of his pottery. Jesus who is fully God, shows us what God is fully like. Now Jesus has always been the perfect cosmic image of God (Colossians 1:15, we’ll touch on this briefly later in the blog), yet he enters the world of earthly images, and reveals God to us in the form of humanity. He is the highest form of art, the most revelatory of all images on earth. So He says “if you have seen me you have seen the Father” (John 14:9).
Now the deep artistry of the gospel, and truly all of human history as ordained by God is far too much for us to grasp in this blog. Each thread leads to much richness.
For our sake let us pull on a single thread. The thread of purpose. What is the purpose of art? As may have already become clear through our earliear explorations, the purpose of art is to reveal God to His creatures. In this revelation God receives the glory He is due, and His creatures know their creator more, which deepens their intimacy—that is union with him. The Gospel both saves men from their sins, and yet in doing so reveals what God is like to His creatures, and brings them into close union with Him. So we read 1 Peter 1:12 that the workings of the gospel are things that “angels long to look” at. Even God’s heavenly creatures are looking on.
Each aspect of the gospel reveals what God is like. The incarnation reveals the humility of God. God is He who is willing to enter into the realm of His own earthly images, and then be shamed by his own creatures, for their good.
That men are saved by faith too reveals what God is like. God is a triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God the Father is hidden, He is unseen. His Son is He who reveals Him. Jesus has been the revelation of God since eternity past. He is the word of God. That which reveals God, as words reveal their speaker. Word and image are closely intertwined, and Jesus too is the perfect image of God (Colossians 1:15). Now how does the Son see the Father so that He would be the perfect image of the Father? Being that He has for all eternity always been that image and that He is Himself the revelation of the Father. This we can call a higher mystical faith which is brought about through the work of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:10-11). Earthly faith is an artistic representation of this higher faith that is in God Himself. So in the Gospel God given faith which is from the Spirit of God, is that which God gives to men, that makes them into more perfect images of himself. Man as a work of art is playing out what God is like. (As a sidebar: does this not also show us why faith must preceed works? Works are the resulting transformation of the man of faith.)
Now the above is a deep well to explore. I’ve simply stated things which I encourage you the reader to explore more. I have done so without showing all of the avenues that lead to these conclusions. I leave that for a later blog (if you have thoughts on this let me know in the comments).
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