The Beauty of Holiness

At that time David was in the stronghold [of Adullam], and the Philistine garrison was at Bethlehem. David longed for water and
said, “Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!” So the three mighty men broke
through the Philistine lines, drew water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem and carried it back to David. But he refused to drink
it; instead, he poured it out before the Lord. “Far be it from me, O Lord, to do this!” he said. “Is it not the blood of men who went at
the risk of their lives?” And David would not drink it. —2 Samuel 23:14–17

This remarkable story about David tells me more about “the man after God’s own heart” than any other description.

This event is placed in the text as one example of the love and loyalty of David’s tough little army and the quality of David’s life that drew good men around him.

The event occurred during the last stages of David’s conflict with the Philistines, his mortal enemy. Cut off from the northern tribes from which he drew much of his support, David’s situation seemed hopeless.

In a moment of homesickness and deep yearning for a former, less complicated time, David uttered a quiet wish for a drink from a well near Bethlehem he recalled from his youth. It was just a wish, nothing more, but three of his men heard him and took him at his word.

Without a word these men crept out of the stronghold at Adullam, fought their way through the Philistine lines to the well on the northeast side of the city of Bethlehem, drew water, fought their way back to David, and presented him with their gift.

David looked at the blood and bruises on their bodies and poured out the water as an offering to the Lord. It had cost too much; it was too precious to drink.

After reading about David and his mighty men with a couple of my friends one day, one of the men in the group leaned back in his chair and muttered to himself, “What a beautiful guy.”

“Beautiful” sounded odd to me at the time, especially when applied to a rugged old warrior like David, but it’s exactly the right word. The Bible itself speaks of  “the beauty of holiness” (Psalm 29:2; 96:9 KJV) as though true goodness is something beautiful to see. It is. Peter put it this way: “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1 Peter 2:12). The word twice translated “good” in this text means “beautiful.” In that sense David was indeed a “beautiful guy.”

The best way to see the true beauty of manhood is to see it in Jesus. Those who knew him best said that He was a good man, “full of grace and truth.” Everything He did was truthful, and yet He was unfailingly gracious.

There is “truth” that isn’t gracious at all. It may be the antithesis of falsehood, but it’s also the antithesis of beauty. It was grace linked with truth that made Jesus the man He was.

I think of that occasion on which His disciples were arguing about who was the greatest. Who could have blamed our Lord if He had blasted them? But He did not. He rather girded Himself with a towel and washed their feet. He who was the greatest of all became the servant of all. Don’t you think His disciples thought, What a beautiful man?

And then there was that leper Jesus encountered when He was teaching in one of the little villages of Galilee. Luke 5:12 (KJV) says the man was “full of leprosy”—a medical expression for an advanced case of the disease. He was all lesions, running sores, and grotesque stumps, discolored and disfigured, shocking in his ugliness, a gross caricature of what a man was intended to be.

Jesus, moved with compassion, reached out and hugged him. He didn’t have to touch him. He could have cured the man with a word from afar. Yet there was every need in the world to hug this ugly, awful man because no one else had done so. Don’t you think that man went away thinking, What a beautiful man?

I think of the dirty little street urchins of that day who used to tag along behind Jesus and climb into His lap, and I remember the adage that a truly good man is one “around whose gate and garden children are unafraid to play.” His disciples wanted to shoo them away. Jesus gathered them into His arms and blessed them. Don’t you think they remembered Him as a beautiful man?

These vignettes reflect a manly beauty that’s hard to put into words. It’s more than being decent, ethical, and right. It has a rugged, “more than” quality about it that Jesus summed up with the question, “What are you doing more than others?” (Matthew 5:47). It’s a matter of doing things beautifully.

True goodness is not doing extraordinary things. It is doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way. Pascal said, “The strength of a man’s virtue must not be measured by his efforts but by his ordinary life.” It is not so much a matter of overt religious behavior as it is a gracious, winsome spirit with which we do everything.

Jesus was inclined to be very stern with those who wore their religion on their sleeves: “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them,” He warned. “If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven” (Matthew 6:1). We’ll never hear God’s “Atta boy!” that way.

Authentic goodness is something more subtle. Howard Butt described it this way: “It is not a way of doing special things. It is a special way of doing everything.” It’s how we play the game: how we conduct ourselves when we play a round of golf; how we behave ourselves at a business conference; how we talk to our wives and our children; how we respond to slights and injustices. It is doing everything we do with a certain elegance and style.

I’m reminded of a friend of mine, Brian Morgan, who went to Stanford University in the 1970s with hopes of becoming an Olympic gymnast. Someone had planted Paul’s word in his mind, “Glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20 KJV). His plan was to hone his body to perfection and then, having achieved a certain measure of athletic prominence, give God all the credit for his success. But Brian was an athlete who matured early and got no better. In fact, he got worse. His senior year was a disaster.

The coup de grâce came at an NCAA meet when he fell off the high bar and landed on his head. It was hard on his head but good for his soul, he said. That’s when it came to him that what Paul actually said was, glorify God in your body, not with it. It was far more important for him to be gracious in dishonor than to win big and look good. It’s that subtle shift in thought that represents the beauty of holiness.

We cannot, by moral effort, change ourselves one iota. Everything that needs to be done in our souls can only be done by God. “All virtue is a miracle,” said Augustine.

Change creeps to us. It is the fruit of our association with Jesus. As we draw close to Him day by day—walking with Him, talking to Him, listening to His words, relying on Him, asking for His help—His character begins to rub off on us. Quietly and unobtrusively His influence softens our wills, making us thirsty for His righteousness. In His quiet love He takes all that’s unworthy in us and gradually turns it into something beautiful.

We cannot adorn ourselves. “You adorn yourself in vain,” says Jeremiah 4:30. Rather, with David, we can only “gaze upon the beauty of the Lord” (Psalm 27:4) and ask Him to transform us into His image, from one degree of likeness to the next.

“O Lord, help me!” This is our prayer as well.

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Taken from Seeing God, ©2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566 Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights reserved.