The Artwork of God
The Church as the Embodied Gospel
Knowing good art is always in the eye of the beholder but bad art is easy to recognize when we encounter it. I want you to keep that in mind as you read this post, which is about the church as the artwork of God. I’ll explain a little more but the important matter has to do with the quality of artwork people encounter when they meet our local churches.
If you’re reading my book or just reading the posts I have been sharing, you know that I believe the church is called to live as followers of Jesus. This means we are called to live a particular way of life. In the fourth chapter of Gospel Portraits: Reading Scripture as Participants in the Mission of God, which has to do with the church as the artwork of God.
I get deeper into the matter of following Jesus by thinking of discipleship as a practice. The idea of practice draws from the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and involves what he regards as internal goods, which as certain skills aimed at achieving a particular goal based on those skills.1 In short, when thinking of discipleship as a practice, we cannot truly claim to be followers of Jesus unless we are living by the “skills” taught by Jesus that define discipleship.
Now there’s room for discussion and even disagreement as to what are the essential skills of discipleship but such skills are not difficult to imagine. To name a few, we might start with showing mercy, becoming a servant, loving others, and telling the truth. What is important is that when we practice such skills, we are living as followers of Jesus and therefore living as an embodiment of the gospel. That also matters to our understanding of the church as the artwork of God. In particular, I have in mind the way in which local churches embody the gospel. That’s because it is within local communities of disciples where people truly encounter what it means to be among the church and therefore what the good news of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God really is. But to understand this, we also have to think about the church as the artwork of God.
So what do I mean by the church as the artwork of God? Well, first of all, it’s the Bible that describes the church as God’s artwork. The apostle Paul writes that “we are God’s accomplishment created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives.”2 The key word here is “accomplishment.” Other English translations use the word “handiwork” (NIV), “masterpiece” (NLT), or “workmanship” (ESV). In the original language, the word is poiēma, which is where we get our English words poem and poetry from. I mention this because poetry is a form of art and what Paul is saying in this passage is that we, the church of Jesus Christ, are the artwork of God.3
The purpose of art is to place a particular work on display so that others will see the art. Art is to be encountered. So God is placing the church on display so that the people will encounter his artwork but for what purpose? For the sake of keeping these posts fairly short, I suggest that God is putting the church on display so that the world may begin to see what the future of his redemptive work in Christ is life. That is, God is painting a portrait of the new creation he is bringing about in Christ with the church. The church participates in the mission of God by embodying the gospel and thus living as God’s gospel portrait. This means that local churches serve as gospel portraits, hence the title of my book.
I realize that at any given time in history there are segments within the universal church that fail to truly embody the gospel, becoming bad artwork. My hope is that as we think about our own churches, we can discern what kind of portrait our neighbors will encounter. Does our embodiment of the gospel offer a coherent portrait of the good news of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God — God’s new creation in Christ? Of course, how we read the Bible goes a long way in shaping the answer to such a question and whether our local churches exist as the artwork God seeks to display.
I hope you find this post helpful as you think about your own church. Of course, I hope you’ll get a copy of my book because I think it will be of help to you. Anyway, thank you for reading.
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study of Moral Theory, 3rd ed., Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007, 187. See also Bryan Stone, Evangelism After Christendom: The Theology and Practice of Christian Witness, Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2007.
Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotations are taken from the Common English Bible, copyright 2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
D. Edmond Hiebert, “God’s Creative Masterpiece,” Direction 23 (Spring 1994), 117.
Nice piece, caught my attention last night with the email notification and makes me more anxious to make time soon to read chapter 4 in your book.
As an artist even this blog piece prompted so many thoughts about the metaphor of the Church (and us as individuals) being God's artwork!
You mentioned the difference between bad art and good art. While I suppose that is subjective and in my experience there are certainly many people who like or settle for what I would consider bad art, probably for a variety of reasons including the fact that good art comes at a high cost, in general I think the average person could pretty much be in agreement in judging bad art from good art and all the spectrum from fair to mediocre to outstanding.
As I am working on a painting this morning and thinking about this piece of writing, too many particular things come into my mind to simply comment :)
If I were to pick just one thing that in my view helps me identify a piece of bad art handled by an untrained person within the first 30 seconds of looking at a visual work, it would be their handling of values.
Meaning their handling of the spectrum of darks and lights and their understanding of color theory.
There's a lot I could say about this in terms of metaphor, and practice. But I will pause here at least for the moment!
Nice piece, caught my attention last night with the email notification and makes me more anxious to make time soon to read chapter 4 in your book.
As an artist even this blog piece prompted so many thoughts about the metaphor of the Church (and us as individuals) being God's artwork!
You mentioned the difference between bad art and good art. While I suppose that is subjective and in my experience there are certainly many people who like or settle for what I would consider bad art, probably for a variety of reasons including the fact that good art comes at a high cost, in general I think the average person could pretty much be in agreement in judging bad art from good art and all the spectrum from fair to mediocre to outstanding.
As I am working on a painting this morning and thinking about this piece of writing, too many particular things come into my mind to simply comment :)
If I were to pick just one thing that in my view helps me identify a piece of bad art handled by an untrained person within the first 30 seconds of looking at a visual work, it would be their handling of values.
Meaning their handling of the spectrum of darks and lights and their understanding of color theory.
There's a lot I could say about this in terms of metaphor, and practice. But I will pause here at least for the moment!