What Did Jesus Look Like?

I find it interesting that no physical description of Jesus is given in the pages of Scripture. His physical appearance fascinates many people, and it certainly has perplexed artists throughout history.

We know that Jesus was a relatively ordinary-looking person, because the prophet Isaiah wrote, “He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him” (Isaiah 53:2). So Jesus would not necessarily have been strikingly handsome. He would have been somewhat normal-looking.

Jesus didn’t walk around with a permanent halo over His head. Nor did He constantly glow, as religious art sometimes depicts. If this had been the case, it would have been a lot easier for Judas to identify Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Certainly He wouldn’t have had to betray Him with a kiss. In the physical sense, Jesus did not appear to be God.

Now the Bible doesn’t tell us what His hair color was. Nor does it tell us what His skin color was. Yet we know He was a man. We know He had a beard. He was Jewish, and in those days, it meant that He probably had dark hair, dark eyes, and dark skin.

But I don’t think it’s of any great importance whether His skin was light or dark or whether His eyes were brown or blue. God didn’t give us that information. Knowing our propensity for idol worship, God probably did not give us a physical description of Jesus, because He knew we would probably use it to create an object of worship.

God told us as much about the appearance of Jesus as we need to know.