What did Jesus look like?

We have reserved the greatest example to the last, even that of our Lord Himself. No words can exaggerate the greatness of His undiminished Deity, nor the graciousness of His stoop to man’s estate, nor the affectionate solicitude of the Father as to His every word and action. And yet there is no account of His physical appearance given to us in the Scriptures. We do read that “His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men” (Isa. 52:14), a prophecy made centuries before our Lord was born at Bethlehem. The mind of the Spirit of God was filled with the spiritual anguish that would be His, “a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3)—a spiritual anguish that marred His very features. Blessed Saviour!

In the writings of men we get such presentations as the following: “He stood well over six feet high, with noble head and white-flowing locks, eagle eye, majestic alike in looks and manners.” This is not the method of the Bible, and we may learn a great lesson therefrom.

In the Bible we get very little description of physical appearance, but more of moral characteristics, and even that very sparingly. For instance, take the case of the Apostle Paul. Of all the servants of the Lord in the New Testament he was the most remarkable, and yet we have no description whatever of his personal appearance in a favourable sense. The little he does say of himself is to report what his adversaries said of him, that, “his bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible” (2 Cor. 10:10). Tradition tells us something of his physical appearance, but the Bible never does so in the way of adulatory description, usual in the writings of men.

Verse 2 presents Him to us in two ways. First, as He was in the eyes of God. Mankind in general, and Israel in particular, had proved themselves to be "dry ground," quite unproductive of anything that was good; yet out of this there sprang up this "tender plant," which drew its life and nourishment from elsewhere. The Lord Jesus truly sprang out of Israel, through the Virgin Mary His mother, but the excellence of His holy Manhood was due not to her but to the action of the Holy Spirit of God.

But second, He is presented as He was in the eyes of men. He had "no form nor lordliness," (New Trans.), nor the kind of beauty that men admire and desire. Some haughty, imperious man of imposing appearance would have caught the popular fancy; but instead of this He was "a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," as verse 3 says. Being who He was, such a One as He could not be otherwise, as He entered and walked through a ruined creation with all its degradation and woe. This men did not understand, since they were insensible to their own degradation, and consequently they despised and rejected Him, as the prophet here predicts.

When they saw Him, however, He bore no royal appearance in their eyes there was “no beauty that we should desire Him”; there was “no form nor lordliness.” Had one come with the towering height of Saul, or the attractiveness of Absalom, Israel would have followed Him; so utterly unable is fallen man to learn. Physical and outward show he esteems: moral and inward perfection he despises.

First, then, we find that when the Lord had taken Peter, James, and John his brother, and had brought them up into an high mountain apart, He "was transfigured before them, and His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light." (Matt. 17:1-2.) Without entering at this time into the special character of this scene, its relation to the period at which our blessed Lord had arrived in His ministry in the midst of Israel, or its dispensational significance, we may, in a few words, consider what this transfiguration was in regard to Himself personally. When He ascended the mountain in company with His disciples, He was, to all outward appearance, but a man amongst men. To the carnal eye there was nothing to distinguish Him from Peter, James, or John. Whatever those whose eyes were anointed saw, or we have since learned from the Scriptures by the teaching of the Spirit of God, there was nothing to indicate any difference between the body which God had prepared for Him and the "earthen vessels" of His disciples. But while on the mount this wondrous change (termed transfiguration) occurred. What, then, was its nature? May we not say, that it was His essential purity or holiness breaking forth and transfusing the vessel in which it was enshrined, so that He stood before His disciples as a being of light? For "His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light." This vessel — His body — shrouded at other times these rays of His beauty and glory, but now, permitted to stream out unhinderedly, they penetrated through and irradiated both His body and His garments, so that He was actually and livingly glorified before their eyes.

But what is this moral beauty added to physical beauty, and yet always incomplete, in the presence of Christ's beauty? He had no form nor comeliness, His visage was marred more than any man, but all the moral glory that filled Him shone upon His face and shed light all about Him. Grace was poured into His lips, and so it is said of Him: “Thou art fairer than the sons of men … therefore God has blessed Thee for ever” (Ps. 45:2).

At the time our account begins, King David was about seventy years old. He was far from having reached extreme old age, but a life of sufferings, conflict, and grief wears at the strength of even the most robust of men, so that the king "was old and advanced in age." At thirty-three years of age, the Lord Himself appeared to be fifty years old (John 8:57), but His strength was unbroken. He was not, like David, worn by grief, but, Man of Sorrows, His face was marred more than any man. Love impressed this character upon His features, for He in sympathy carried all the sorrows that sin had brought upon our miserable race.

The "Man of sorrows" may be addressed on one occasion as though He appeared to be nearly fifty years old (John 8:57). But I am to know, from that, only how He had borne sorrows and services for our blessing and the Father's glory. In such features I am to read Him whose "visage was so marred more than any man," because of His endurings for us, and the contradiction of sinners against Him; and not because of the decaying tendencies of natural old age in the smallest measure of them, as though such tendencies by any possibility could attach to Him.

172 John 8:57. — "Fifty years old." What is one to think of Loisy, who follows Ireneus, saying that, "according to the Evangelist, the Christ was about fifty years old when He died" (p. 13)? as to which Schmiedel sensibly remarks that Irenæus was not trustworthy in respect of traditions of that kind. The "fifty" might be explained from Num. 4:3, 39, Num. 8:24, but probably means, what is generally supposed, that the blessed Saviour was prematurely old. Cf. Zahn, ad loc.

David was ruddy and of a lovely countenance and beautiful appearance (1 Sam. 16:12). Similarly, Moses was ‘fair’ and exceedingly lovely (Ex. 2:2; Acts 7:20), and Daniel was ‘of goodly countenance’ (Dan. 1:4). The real meaning of these descriptions is that the men were ‘fair’ or ‘beautiful’ in God’s eyes. But they only prefigure the one of whom it is said: ‘Thou art fairer than the sons of men; grace is poured into thy lips: therefore God hath blessed thee for ever’ (Ps. 45:2). For us Jesus had ‘no form nor comeliness’ (Isa 53:2). We failed to see his beauty. But the eye of God always looks deeper. What He saw was only glory and beauty. The Lord Jesus is unique and incomparable. He manifested all those wonderful traits that God wanted to see in man on earth, and there was nothing that could disfigure or distort this wonderful display of divine glories and excellences in Him.