What did Jesus look like according to the Bible?

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!

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.

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.

And such were His sufferings—so real, so intense—that His whole form, as well as His visage, was visibly marred. It is well known that even the representations of Him showed this before Constantine’s time, but not afterwards. However prudent Jehovah’s Servant was, however wisely He acted, yet deep and distressful sorrows were His, shame and stripes and afflictions untold came upon Him before His exaltation. But if “many were astonished” (v. 14) at His humiliated appearance, likewise “shall He astonish [not sprinkle] many nations” and kings (v. 15) by His exalted majesty. He is truly the Sign in the depth of humiliation and in the height of glory. Powerful potentates princes, rulers, shall stand and see with amazement. Kings shall shut their mouths before His royal majesty. “What they had not heard shall they consider” (v. 15), when He, who was once treated so shamefully, is shown to be Israel’s king and the Prince of the kings of the earth.

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.

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.

If this were so, Christ, as He was in His transfiguration, is the presentation of what believers will be when they are glorified with Him. Hence, indeed, Moses and Elias, since they appeared in glory when they talked with Him (Luke 9:30-31), typify saints in this condition; and herein lies the significant connection in the use of the word on which we are commenting. Christ on the mount shows us what His people will be when He comes to receive them unto Himself; but then this mighty change is morally commenced in them while here. Thus, in Rom. 12:2, the apostle says, "Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed (transfigured) by the renewing of your mind," etc. This Scripture shows that our transfiguration must commence from within; for the apostle enjoins nonconformity to the world, and transfiguration by the renewing of our mind. Confining our attention to this single point, the question may well be put, But how is this to be accomplished? Passing now to 2 Cor. 3:18, the answer is found. There we see Christ, not on the mount, but glorified at the right hand of God. All the glory of God shines forth from His face, and His face, unlike that of Moses when he talked with the children of Israel, is unveiled. Moreover, all believers are brought into that place where they can gaze on that glory. "We all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord." Then we learn the further thing, that it is by beholding we "are changed (transfigured) into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." This is the moral effect of having Christ in glory before our souls. He is the standard or model; and we, while beholding, are through the power of the Spirit gradually transfigured on towards the likeness of Him on whom we gaze. We say "on towards," because while here in the body we can never be completely conformed to the glorified Christ. It is therefore a gradual moral transfiguration; every ray of His glory that falls upon our souls being made, through the operation of the Holy Ghost, to have this effect.

Now note His appearance to John on the Lord's Day. Head and hairs white like wool remind us of the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7:9, to whom the Son of Man comes with the clouds of Heaven, and is invested with all the rights and dignities of the Kingdom. But verse 22 of the same chapter lets us know that the Son of Man is Himself the Ancient of Days! In verse 7 the Son of Man comes, and in verse 22 it is the Ancient of Days who comes! Thus the Son of Man and the Ancient of Days are one!

The Lord took body, soul and spirit to Himself. He had a real body, visible and tangible,9 made of flesh and blood,10 capable of pain and suffering, but not partaking of the consequences of the fall. He was not subject to death as an inevitable event. He died by His own power.11 The ageing process, which is a result of the fall,12 was not in Him. His body was perfect. Also, as having a soul,13 He had real human emotions but without any sinful tendency. In His spirit14 He had real human thoughts by which He could have, even as Man, perfect fellowship with His Father.

Similarly the narrative of the resurrection still displays to us the face of the Man: the journey to Emmaus, the appearing to His own in Jerusalem, His eating before them, — all these are of the same sort as the record of His life had been, and all make very near and very dear this blessed, holy "Man Christ Jesus."