The Ugliness of Jesus Christ
Now before you flip the table,
let me say when I say "The Ugliness of Jesus Christ" I am simply referring to what the bible itself says about Jesus' appearance:
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.
Isa 53:2
That text was composed approximately 800 years before the life of Jesus but was fulfilled by him in his earthly life.
By prophecy - of all things - in order to fulfill his purpose by the Father, Jesus assumed a plain form.
Jesus by the clear design of God was called to be ugly.
Why study the Ugliness of Jesus?
Now it's not very deep and possibly offensive to repeat over and over that Jesus was ugly.
But given this was such an important feature of The Christ that it was appointed as a fulfillment of prophecy, why did God make Jesus this way?
First, it wasn't looks alone that Jesus was plain in.
Poverty
Jesus was born to a poor couple. As Proverbs says of the poor:
Many seek the favor of a generous man,
and everyone is a friend to a man who gives gifts.
All a poor man’s brothers hate him;
how much more do his friends go far from him!
He pursues them with words, but does not have them.
Proverbs 19:6-7
Most people don't like poor friends because they are always in need, and their situation is uncomfortable to see. This was Jesus' portion, who lived in a small backwater town that was the ire of his people: "can anything good come out of Nazareth?"
Education
Jesus was ugly in another way. He didn't go to the best schools:
"The Jews then were astonished, saying, “How has this man become learned, having never been educated?”
So Jesus answered them and said, “My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me."
John 7:15-16
We find the people who graduate from the best school, carry the valedictorian speeches, and get the best jobs are the glowing stars of our communities. Jesus was the total opposite. He did not study, unlike St. Paul, under Gamaliel. He was no "pharisee of pharisee." He had no prestige.
So all this focus on the "ugliness of Jesus."
What was the purpose of his looks, poverty, and disreputable bible-only education?
Ugliness as a Thematic Type
First let me say that Jesus is kind of a type of the Christian. The Christian is divine royalty clothed in an ordinary life. Likewise was the impoverished carpenter and itinerant rabbi, the Messiah.
Just as Jesus came from all authority in heaven and on earth before he became a man, so the Christian is headed for a life of wielding the authority of Christ.
Just as Jesus was despised by his people, rejected by mankind, so the Christian is a sojourner on the earth and rejected.
The Christian is despised in the Family of The World like the ugly sister is despised in a family of beauty queens.
Just as the Christian is described as "what we will be is not yet seen" so Jesus was not what he was, nor what he would be.
and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.
1 John 3:2
Christ’s Devastating Moral Beauty
Christ did have one feature of utter beauty in his earthly walk:
The glory of his morality.
This was one feature that the Father unveiled and let it glow like the throne of grace itself. Christ was morally impeccable, and this showed in his treatment of mankind. This kind of moral beauty is devastating to broken people.
Not everyone enjoyed this illustrious moral glory, but those who did acted like this:
"and standing behind Him at His feet, weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, and kept wiping them with the hair of her head, and kissing His feet and anointing them with the perfume."
Luke 7:38
Although Jesus was unglorious with his looks, this woman who likely had much outer beauty due to her reputation as "a sinner" (possibly a prostitute, Luke 7:39), she came to see her beauty as a stinking dung heap.
She wanted to lay down her earthly riches of the costly perfume, and demonstrate contrition over her sin with her tears.
She, the supposedly beautiful one wanted the 'ugly one' to take away her ugliness: her moral disfigurement.
It is not always the case that the beautiful are moral monsters. It's not always the case that the ugly are morally beautiful. But often it is the case that outer and inner are starkly different.
One day, however, the reversal of the lie about visible beauty and visible ugliness will be righted.
The Ugly Reversal
I might be able to describe what that righting of visible beauty will be like, but I would rather my favorite theologian do so:
And there is nothing that is deformed with any natural or moral deformity; but everything is beauteous to behold, and amiable and excellent in itself.
The God that dwells and gloriously manifests Himself there, is infinitely lovely; gloriously lovely as a heavenly
Father, as a divine Redeemer, and as a holy Sanctifier.
Jonathan Edwards, Heaven is a World of Love.
In the world to come we will go to the edge of the heavenly kingdom and see the end of those whose beauty was a passing and deceitful thing (proof: Isaiah 66:24)
The merely beautiful people in our time were not genuinely beautiful, but ugly. Just as Jesus was not genuinely ugly, but beautiful.
All those who laid their life down each day for obedience to the gospel and commands of the Lord, will have the ugliness taken away.
The genuine them that is utterly ugly will be purged just as it was for that outwardly beautiful woman who realized what real beauty was:
“For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.”
Then He said to her, “Your sins have been forgiven.”
Luke 7:47-48
Who’s Really Ugly Here?
Lets then be honest about what is beautiful and what is ugly, because soon the veil will be off, and the truth out.
The Beautiful One is coming to deal with the ugly.
Credit to Mark Jones in his book Knowing Christ for this insight, but thankfully, Jesus is no longer ugly nor will he ever be outwardly ugly again:
You are the most handsome of the sons of men;
grace is poured upon your lips;
therefore God has blessed you forever.
Psalm 45:2
This text describing Jesus as an enthroned king is greatly comforting for those of us who live for him an an outwardly beautiful but decaying world.
If you live for him, you too will have his beauty poured upon you like the “sinner’s'“ perfume.
Nate
S.D.G.