ChosenRebel's Blog

Jesus was unremarkable.

That’s what the Bible says, in both the Old and New Testaments.

There is no physical description of Jesus, or for that matter, almost anyone in the New Testament. It simply wasn’t considered important information. It’s not that the ancient world didn’t care about beauty and bodily perfections. Indeed, everything we know about the culture of Rome, and Greece, and all the nations that make up what scholars term ANE (Ancient Near Eastern) tells us that in many ways, these were cultures that were infatuated with beauty in the human form in ways that were very close to our own image-obsessed culture.

So why is the Scripture absent of any physical description of the most significant person in all of history? 

We get two comments in the Old Testament on the physical appearance of the Messiah in Isaiah 52:13-53:12. Speaking of Jesus, the future Messiah, the prophet Isaiah says:

Isaiah 52:14

¹⁴ Just as many were appalled at you, My people,
So His appearance was marred beyond that of a man,
And His form beyond the sons of mankind.

Isaiah 53:2-3

² For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of dry ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we would look at Him,
Nor an appearance that we would take pleasure in Him.
³ He was despised and abandoned by men,
A man of great pain and familiar with sickness;
And like one from whom people hide their faces,
He was despised, and we had no regard for Him.

In the New Testament we also have two comments related in some way to physical appearance (apart from Jesus eating, fishing, walking, fasting, suffering, thirsting—all of which establish His humanity but tell us nothing about what He looked like). 

Luke Lk 2:51

“And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”

Not much there! 

The closest hint we get in the New Testament of anything related to how Jesus looked hints at something that our own culture would not view as positive. In a long extended argument with the Pharisees Jesus makes the following claim and the Pharisees make an interesting comment.

John 8:53-59

⁵³ You are not greater than our father Abraham, who died, are You? The prophets died too. Whom do You make Yourself out to be?” ⁵⁴ Jesus answered, “If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing; it is My Father who glorifies Me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God’; ⁵⁵ and you have not come to know Him, but I know Him. And if I say that I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you; but I do know Him, and I follow His word. ⁵⁶ Your father Abraham was overjoyed that he would see My day, and he saw it and rejoiced.” ⁵⁷ So the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and You have seen Abraham?” ⁵⁸ Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” ⁵⁹ Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and left the temple grounds.

In other words, he looked old for his age!

So here is the sum total of everything we know about Jesus’s appearance:

• He was unremarkable in appearance.
• Nothing in his appearance commended Him to people. Not especially handsome or tall, or short, nothing to suggest he was either fat or skinny.
• Nothing that made Him stand out from other Jews or inhabitants of Judea.
• Nothing stately or majestic in His appearance.
• Nothing that would call attention to Him.
• Nothing that tells us the color of His hair or eyes.
• Nothing that tells us the length of His hair.
• Nothing at all.

The New Testament, indeed, the entire Bible is COMPLETELY uninterested in telling us anything about His appearance. It is ENTIRELY FOCUSED on His message and His sacrifice for our sin. Christ was completely unremarkable in appearance. It was (and is) His works and His words that are remarkable. Paul put it this way . . .

“God demonstrated His own love toward us,
in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
(Romans 5:8)

Remarkable! 

Not by what our world values but by God’s eternal plan and one impeccable life laid down for sinners like you and me and the demonstrated power of the resurrection.

God’s ways are always extraordinary and turn the ways of man, including our expectations, upside down.