1 Timothy 3:16
Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body,
I overheard a conversation in which someone wondered out loud what Jesus looked like.
The thought arose at the side of a loved one not far from heaven who would soon see our Lord face-to-face. What a joyful moment that will be.
Certainly, artists have depicted our Lord in various ways. Some of those portraits, whether William Holman Hunt's depiction of Christ knocking at the door, or the Warner Sallman portrait of the head of Christ painted in 1941, or the skillful illustrations by Richard Hook in so many Lutheran Sunday School materials, have each shaped our mental image of Jesus.
Of course, the Bible doesn't give us a word sketch of Jesus' physical appearance and he never sat for a painting.
It says in the Psalms 45:2, "You are the most excellent of men and your lips have been anointed with grace, since God has blessed you forever," but this refers to Christ's glorious work of redemption.
Another Old Testament reference was penned centuries before Jesus' Bethlehem birth. Isaiah 53:2; "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him" which speaks of his shame and state of humiliation.
So, Jesus' stature or the color of his eyes, the width of his shoulders or the length of his stride we cannot know.
But we do know he lived and walked among us. He was hungry, tired, happy or sad, just as all other people are.
What occurred to me when I heard the question about Jesus' appearance was that he looked, well, like you.
Jesus is as human as you or I. The Bible speaks of his face, eyes, hands -- hands that were pierced, feet nailed to a cross, and a wounded side.
But the real admiration in all this is that the Son of God became man. He took on our nature and form. We call this the incarnation. God became man. He looks just like you.
That's what matters, not the hue of his skin or the texture of his hair. We confess something deeper than family resemblance. We say the human child in the manger, the son of the Virgin Mary, is truly and fully God, the eternal, almighty, all-creating God. And yet a man. No wonder the shepherds marveled at what they had seen-- not a likeness, not a drawing, not a mere rendering-but the real God who is man.
