Fulfillment

What did Jesus look like?

People have a funny idea of what Jesus looked like. Jesus of Nazareth was not white-skinned. Jesus was not European. Jesus was a Jew. Jesus lived in the land of Israel, in the Middle East. The Bible tells us that Jesus walked wherever He went, so we can easily imagine that His olive skin would have been darkened by the sun.

Jesus would not have had a neat, trimmed beard, because a command (Leviticus 19:27) in the Law of Moses , which the Bible says Jesus observed, required Jewish males to “not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.”

Hundreds of years after Jesus’ life on earth, Renaissance artists painted pictures that made Jesus look handsome. They were not accurate representations of Jesus’ likeness. The painters were following Italian traditions and the culture of Europe, rather than what the Bible says, and they certainly had never met Jesus. Sadly, their artworks continue to influence thinking to this day.

The only verse in the Bible about Jesus’ physical form, before His death and resurrection, is found in Isaiah 53:2. It says:

In other words, the only biblical description of Jesus during His time on earth says that He was not physically attractive.

Beauty, in God’s eyes, comes from within