What does the Bible say Jesus Christ looked 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!

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.

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.

Now down there in Galilee mark this Person whom you and I know. He was humble in His walk in life, nothing striking in His appearance, had never been recognized by the ecclesiastical authorities of the day, a Person living for a long while in a village of which it was said, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" going down then to Capernaum, a small fishing village. But this Person, strange to say, is the missing glory — this Person is the one in whom we see the great light — the light of God.

“As a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground” (v. 2), He was to grow up before God. Isaiah speaks in a similar way in Isaiah 11. The royal tree of David had been brought low. All hope seemed to be gone, but “a tender plant,” a small shoot, shows itself. It is destined to bear all the royal glory. It grows up before God. He watches over it; protecting and caring for it. Before Him “it grows”; a prophecy fulfilled in Luke 2, where we read “And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit … and the grace of God was upon Him … and Jesus increased in wisdom and stature.”

Verses 2 and 3 — "He shall grow up before Him." This is the 'Arm of the LORD' growing up before Jehovah. To Him, Christ in the days of His flesh was a root out of a dry ground; life and fruitfulness in all their potentialities were there in Him. Israel was the dry ground. There was no sustenance for our Lord there. All His support was drawn from above. To Israel He was an object of derision and scorn — hence "a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."

How vast a field is thus opened for our contemplation! Following Christ in His pathway down here, from the manger at Bethlehem to the cross at Calvary, we see the unfoldings both of the human and Divine. As we behold Him, His lowly guise, "His visage so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men" (Isa. 52:14); as we mark Him in companionship with His disciples, and see Him weary and resting, eating and drinking, weeping with those who wept (John 11), and sleeping, too, on a pillow in the hinder part of the ship (Mark 4:38), we cannot doubt that He was man. It was, indeed, the proofs of His humanity which, meeting their eyes, confounded His adversaries, and blinded them to His higher claims.

The goat, the ram, and the badger, must be regarded as exhibiting certain natural features, and also as symbolising certain moral qualities; and we must take both into account in our application of these figures to the character of Christ. The human eye could only discern the former. It could see none of the moral grace, beauty, and dignity, which lay beneath the outward form of the despised and humble Jesus of Nazareth. When the treasures of heavenly wisdom flowed from His lips, the inquiry was, "Is not this the carpenter?" or "How knows this man letters, having never learned?" When He asserted His eternal Sonship and Godhead, the word was, "Thou art not yet fifty years old," or "They took up stones to cast at him." In short, the acknowledgement of the Pharisees, in John 9, was true in reference to men in general. "as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is."

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.

The transfiguration recorded in the opening verses of Matthew 17 are interpreted for us in the words of the Lord in the last verse of the previous chapter, "There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom". The supreme and personal glory of Jesus, the Son of Man, was seen by the disciples when "His face did shine as the sun", and the glory of His kingdom was in evidence in His raiment "white as the light". In His humiliation, "His visage was so marred more than any man", but, in the day of His kingdom, His visage will be resplendent in a glory that displays Him as the Supreme One.