John Kitto Evening Bible Devotions: May 9

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John Kitto Evening Bible Devotions: May 9

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The Person of Jesus Christ

Isa_53:2

When we reflect that our Lord became indeed a man, and, as a man, was seen by friends and enemies walking the dusty roads and narrow streets of Palestine, there can be no harm in trying to realize to ourselves the appearance which He, as a man, during his sojourn on earth, presented to the eyes of men. That which ordinary men were permitted to behold in the common circumstances of daily life, we need not shrink from picturing to our minds. To attempt to realize materially to the mental conception, and still more to represent in painting or sculpture, the Divine Godhead, is a different matter from the attempt to depict to the mind Him who was “God manifest in the flesh.” While, therefore, we can regard without displeasure even paintings in which the Lord Jesus is represented some of the circumstances of his life on earth, we cannot but shrink with dismay from the representations of God the Father, and of Christ glorified, which are so common abroad, and which, although but rarely seen here, are but too well known to us by means of engravings. The effect is injurious to the mind. Of this we can well judge, from the shock we only yesterday received in lighting accidentally upon an engraving thus representing the Almighty seated on his throne. The work was beautiful, but a faintness came over our spirit, and it was felt as if the soul had received some stain in having thus received the impact of an unspiritual idea of God.

But with regard to the Lord Jesus, the case is, as we have said, altogether different; and so long as the inquiry is conducted with the reverence due to his sacred and venerable person, it is quite allowable, and is indeed natural, to inquire in what aspect He appeared among men. In fact, whether like it or not, we do almost unconsciously form to ourselves an idea of the person of Christ. It is impossible to read the Gospels, containing the history of his life and death, without realizing to ourselves an idea of his appearance, just as we do of any other historical personage. It is impossible to help it: and it is no sin. These ideal images vary, but are more alike than might be supposed, being in a great degree founded upon the prints and pictures in which our Lord is represented, and which have all a certain resemblance to each other, being founded on traditional descriptions of no real authority, and on various ancient likenesses in medals, gems, pictures, statues—all acknowledged to be spurious.

There are, in fact, certain passages of the prophetical Scriptures which seem to invite, and have invited, attention to this question. Two of them occur in two adjoining chapters of Isaiah. No prophecies in the Bible more clearly refer to our Lord than those contained in Isaiah 52, 53. In the former we read (Isa_52:14), “His visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men.” And in the latter (Isa_53:2), “He hath no form nor comeliness and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.”

This obviously raises the question, Was Jesus distinguished among men by the beauty of his person, or otherwise? We have not to inquire what is most pleasant to believe in this matter, but what is most probably true. For ourselves, we do not know what is “most pleasant” to believe. When we reflect, that of the men distinguished for personal graces, there are few who have taken a leading part in human affairs, or have won high names in the various paths of honor, we hesitate to think it more pleasant to contend that our Lord was endowed with that beauty which charms the eye. The world, however, has generally decided that it is more pleasant; and therefore certainly this is the prevalent opinion, and is likely to remain such.

In support of this view, we are referred to one of the Messianic Psalms (Psalms 45), in which Christ is described as “fairer than the sons of men;” and we are reminded that in our Lord’s birth and bringing up, all the circumstances were present which, under ordinary circumstances, conduce to the perfection and beauty of the human form, and all the incidents were absent which tend to prevent its most admirable development. Some ascribe to the winning charm of his aspect, the facility with which the apostles left all to follow Him; and infer the solemn majesty of his countenance from the facts, that the dealers submitted to be driven from the Temple by his single hand, and that the men who came to apprehend Him in the garden fell back, subdued and dismayed, when He confronted them. This, in each instance, seems to us a wretchedly (we had almost said revoltingly) low ascription to the influence of personal appearance, the power of that Divine energy which wrought with Him and in Him as He would, and which doubtless was seen in his eyes and was heard in his voice, whatever may have been his personal appearance. The question is not to be decided by such considerations; and the text on which so much reliance is placed clearly refers to Christ glorified, and not to Christ in the day of his humiliation.

Besides, in different climates and countries, different ideas are entertained of that which constitutes beauty of personal appearance; and that which is beautiful in the eyes of one nation, is not so in that of another. Thus, if our Lord appeared under an aspect of outward beauty, it was doubtless Jewish beauty; and this, although upheld by some as the perfection of manly comeliness, is not, we apprehend, generally so regarded in Western and Northern Europe. This is shown by the fact that the painters, in their representations of our Lord’s person, never ascribe to it a Jewish aspect.

Having this difference in the standard of human beauty in view, it is well that we are left in ignorance regarding the exact personal appearance of the founder of a religion destined to overspread all the nations of the earth.

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the passages in Isaiah which refer to the subject, and which are found in the most literal of his prophecies, are altogether unfavorable to the idea of the Messiah’s being distinguished for the beauty of his visage in the time of his earthly sojourning. The want of this is rather set forth as part of his humiliation, and with it that humiliation would scarcely have been complete. If we interpret literally the rest of this prophecy, why should this be figurative? May it not have been part of the Divine plan to rebuke the pride of man, and his inordinate appreciation of mundane beauty—as it was in the assignment of the chief part in the calling of the Gentiles to the fold of Christ by one “whose bodily presence was weak, and his speech contemptible?”

The upholders of the literal interpretation of these passages, in their application to the person of Christ, reminds us that, throughout the New Testament, there is no ascription to Him of that outward grace and beauty as at once attracts the love and regard of man. It is remembered that Mary Magdalene took Him for the gardener, after his resurrection; and some, comparing this text with that in which Paul describes our Lord as having taken on Him “the form of a servant,” urge for this a personal application also. It is also noted, that the Evangelists record the circumstances of his transfiguration in such a manner as to show that his ordinary appearance to them was something very different indeed, and that it was then only, and for a moment, that He was seen by the three privileged disciples as “fairer than the sons of men.”

It is further of some importance in a matter like this, that the earliest of the Christian writers, who lived at the time when any traditions that existed as to the person of the Lord Jesus were comparatively fresh and recent, agree in understanding that the humiliation of Christ extended to his personal appearance; and, indeed, we find this used by the early adversaries of Christianity as an argument against the Divinity of Christ. But after the three first centuries, this opinion gradually went out, and the notion came to be universally entertained, that Jesus was distinguished above men by the perfect beauty of his person. The Jewish commentators saw the advantage this gave them; and one of the most eminent of their number (Abarbanel) astutely argues that Jesus of Nazareth could not be the one prophesied of by Isaiah, seeing that they assigned to him this eminence of beauty, whereas the prophet declared the direct contrary of the subject of his prophecy.

Perhaps the right understanding of this matter would be to consider, that the person of our Lord was in no way distinguished for that mundane beauty which is always rare among men; but that He was not uncomely, save when, as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”—when leading a life of hardship, travel, and privation—when grieving at the hardness of men’s hearts—and when, after

“Cold mountains and the midnight air

Witnessed the fervor of his prayer,”

he became haggard and careworn, wan and wasted, affording visible evidence of the weight of that great burden which, for man’s sake, He had consented to bear. But as we see among men that the power of soul, of mind—the expression of goodness, greatness, or of holy hope—irradiates, refines, exalts, and imparts an unutterable charm to countenances far more ordinary than can be supposed to have belonged to the Savior, how much more must the fact and consciousness of Divinity in Him have shone forth in his eyes, have given intense expression to his countenance, and commanding power to his words, diffusing about his person and his manner something more than the beauty which dwells in flesh, or even than that which the soul can impart to the human countenance—something unseen before on earth, in man or angel! Even in man, the conscious possession of power willingly restrained, of glory consentingly obscured, will impart an indescribable grandeur to the countenance and demeanor. What was this, then, in Him, who was the very “King of glory”—for whose triumphal entry heaven longed to open its everlasting gates—and whose power was still such, that not only would “twelve legions of angels” have gathered around Him at his asking, but whose word would have sufficed to shake the fabric of the universe?