How do you picture Jesus? The question helps us assess our spiritual life.
It’s natural to try and visualize the unseen God. Statues of Zeus and the gods of Mount Olympus, the idols described by the Bible, the Golden Calf… People try to visualize the unseen God. “If an ox could paint a picture, his god would look like an ox,” said Xenophanes, a Greek philosopher of the late 6th and early 5th century B.C. A scholar from our time writes, “Divine images are indeed shaped by human imagination, by the imagination of a society longing for the visualization of the invisible in word and image…” (Joannis Mylonopoulos in “Divine Images and Human Imaginations in Ancient Greece and Rome,” 18). So, how do you picture Jesus?
The disciples saw Jesus in different ways at different times. Up to the time of His death and burial, Jesus looked like a typical human being. After the resurrection, they saw Him as a different kind of human, one who had come through death. “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself” (Luke 24:39). They saw Him do things we can’t do, suddenly appear and disappear, or hide his identity from the Emmaus disciples until He wanted to reveal Himself. But that time passed too. What does Jesus look like after the ascension? Peter, James, and John had a glimpse of His brilliant glory on the Mount of Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-8). Paul on the Damascus Road saw a bright light from heaven and heard a voice (Acts 9:3). So, how do you picture Jesus?
How the Greeks and Romans pictured their gods shaped their spiritual life. Mylonopoulos: “These divine images—conceived, invented, visually and verbally produced in various historical and ritual situations—in turn became models that would ‘mould’ human imagination.” Likewise, our mental images of Jesus shape our spiritual life. If we see Him before the resurrection, in the manger, walking here, walking there, doing miracles, preaching, teaching, finally dying on the cross, we’ve got a partial picture. Picture Him as resurrected, that too is only part of the picture. Now He is ascended, at the right hand of God ruling all things, and soon to return in judgment. How do you picture that? John had a vision of the exalted Christ. You can read it in Revelation 1:12-20. What’s your dominant image of Jesus? How do you picture Jesus as He is now?