The world’s fascinated with how Jesus might look. From the magnificent cathedrals in Europe to Sunday school classrooms, artists from the centuries have created conceptions of Jesus.

Jesus has no stronger portrait than given in Scripture. It’s a word picture of the man who is God. The claim that Jesus Christ is deity is the foundation of Christianity. Since the quickest way to destroy any edifice is to tear out or weaken its base, men have always tried to disprove, ignore, or scoff at the claims of Christ. However, the hope of redemption for man from sin is dependent upon the deity of Christ.

Jesus was a man in history, as well as a man for all times. The first-century Roman historian, Tacitus, spoke of Jesus. Josephus, a Jewish historian wrote of the crucifixion of Jesus. A contemporary encyclopedia used 20,000 words to describe Him using more space than was given to Aristotle, Cicero, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, or Napoleon Bonaparte.

The pictures of Jesus don’t fit the true account of His strength and moral authority. At the end of His earthly life, the religious and political establishments had united to end His work by sending officers to arrest Him. As the burly henchmen approached Jesus, they stopped to listen to what He said. They returned to their superiors without Him and were asked why He wasn’t with them. They said, “No man ever spoke like this Man!” (John 7:46).

The most powerful portrait of Jesus Christ comes from John 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1) and “His name is called The Word of God” (Revelation 19:13). There can be no better description than what is found in the pages of the Bible.

(This column is based on the words and writings of the late Rev. Billy Graham.)

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