Guest Blog: by Courtney Jimenez
Light skin, brown hair, blue eyes, and possibly handsome. If you were raised in Western Europe or North America, this is probably the depiction of Jesus you have come to know. But is this an accurate representation of what Jesus really looked like? Nope!
Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jew of the first century. A more accurate depiction of Jesus would likely include shorter, darker, and curlier hair, darker skin, and darker eyes than most modern portrayals. There are also a few places in the Bible, such as Ezekiel and Revelation, that describe Jesus as having bronze feet. And as for the handsome Jesus we often see in films, Isaiah 53:2 pretty much debunks a striking appearance when it says, “there is no beauty that we should desire Him,” NKJV.
Now that the record has been set straight on his probable appearance, does it matter what Jesus looked like? Does it matter if Jesus was black, white, brown, olive, pale, purple, or rainbow? I think verses such as Colossians 3:11 give us a clue to that answer: “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free,” ESV. In God’s eyes, there is no difference in individuals based on appearance or ethnicity because He looks at the heart to see each of us as we truly are. All around the world, people depict Jesus as looking like themselves, and in a way, this is just as accurate as our historically established answer because, as the end of Colossians 3:11 says, “Christ is all, and in all,” ESV.