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Good Morning. Picture Jesus. In your mind, what did He look like as He performed His earthly ministries? Do you see the rather tall, quite Caucasian looking fellow that adorns the artist’s paintings? Do you see a handsome young man holding a lamb, or a child, or reaching out to the lame or the lost? Those images are what we have grown up seeing, so I think it would be expected that in our mind’s eye these would be our pictures of the Lord.
As we read the New Testament accounts of Jesus, we do not receive any insight into His physical appearance. But wait, take a look at the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. The prophet, the one who was speaking for God Himself, gives us a glimpse of the Lord:
Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Isaiah 53 1-3
Is that image disappointing? It shouldn’t be, because Jesus could never be measured by worldly standards of beauty. If He was typical of the Jewish men of the first century Jesus would have been about 5’4” tall, for that was average. He would have had darker, “olive colored” skin. His hair would have been fairly short, but very dark and curly. He’d have had dark brown eyes and weighed about 110-115 pounds. In fact, if the passage from Isaiah, the words of God Himself, are to be believed, Jesus was in no way handsome, dashing, or remarkable from a physical appearance standpoint.
He bore the wounds of grief, and of pain, and of loss and betrayal. For those whose agenda opposed Him, He was despised and rejected. The kind of man those people turned away from so that they would not have to look into His eyes.
But what about those eyes? Were they for Jesus, “a window into the soul”? I would like to think so, and in fact I can’t imagine it otherwise.
For if you would look into the eyes of Jesus, you would see intensity, determination, and sadness mixed with joy. If you read on in this passage from Isaiah 53, we are told of His mission. For while His physical appearance wasn’t noteworthy, His mission was absolutely incredible. He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:5
See Jesus today and see beauty that this world cannot understand.
Vern