|
Jesus
Christ has no physical description in the Bible, except to say that He
had nothing special in His appearance to draw our attention. The
ancient Hebrew prophet, Isaiah, says it this way:
"Who hath believed our report?
and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant,
and as a root out of a dry ground:
he hath no form nor comeliness;
and when we shall see him,
there is no beauty that we should desire him.
He is despised and rejected of men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief:
and we hid as it were our faces from him;
he was despised, and we esteemed him not."
(Isaiah 53:1-3, KJV)
The Lord
Jesus did not come to this planet to become a great religious or
political leader. His purpose was far greater and far more urgent
than that. He came to save the souls of human beings. That
may sound like a phrase right out of 19th century Bible crusades or
early 20th century tent revivals, but I assure you, both the term and
the concept are far more ancient. God's act of rescuing humanity
from the eternal consequences of sin and evil stretch literally from
eternity past into eternity future.
The Lord
Jesus Christ stepped out of the infinity of heaven's realm into the time
and space occupied by planet earth and the human race in order to heal
the terrible breech in both spiritual and physical creation caused by
sin. Sin and evil did not begin here on our planet. Adam and
Eve were not the first victims. It had already found a place among
the angels. By the time sin reached the earth and robbed humanity
of our spiritual union with God, it had already brought rebellion and
war to about a third of the heavenly beings we call angels, giving rise
to what we now call demons, or unclean spirits. This is just some
of the dark consequences of sin.
Jesus came
to put an end to all of sin's deadly power. The Bible says of the
Lord Jesus, in the New Testament book of Colossians:
"He is the image of the invisible God, the
firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created
that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether
thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were
created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and
in Him all things consist.
"And He is the head of the body, the church, who
is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may
have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him all
the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to
Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having
made peace through the blood of His cross." (Colossians 1:15-20,
KJV)
There is
more along these lines in the 2nd chapter of the same book (see
Colossians 2:6-14).
The point
is this: Jesus Christ is so much more than a mere man to be merely
admired by other human beings. Yes, He was and is truly human,
having become flesh and blood in order to die on the cross for our sins.
But He is also God.
Who else
could do the things the Jesus did? Who else would care so much for
sinners and beggars and lepers and outcasts that He walked and ate and
lived among them, touching them, helping them, healing them, cleansing
them of every disease. God's love inside human hearts may drive us
to also care, as the Lord does, but only God Himself has the power to
change dead tissue into live tissue, to transform mere water into good
wine, and to heal with a simple word.
We do not
know how Jesus looked, how tall He was, or exactly the color of His
hair. But we know what kind of person He was and is today.
We know that He is the eternal Son of the Living God. And we know
that Jesus Christ still works miracles in human lives every day.
And by His Holy Spirit, speaking in the Word of God, the Scriptures, we
also know that Jesus Christ Himself will one day return to earth in
clouds of glory, making things right for the whole earth.
|
