How to Know the Real Jesus

During art history class in high school, I was exposed to several pieces of artwork attempting to picture Jesus. There was a medieval Jesus, Renaissance Jesus, Baroque Jesus—each a different take on the divine Son of God.

As a Christian, though it might seem counterintuitive to some, I’m not at all interested in artistic speculations about Christ. My objection is twofold: First, the Second Commandment prohibits creating images of God. And second, the Bible simply doesn’t provide enough information about Jesus’ appearance, so all these portraits are inaccurate and unhelpful.

After all, how do you justify picturing Him as a light-skinned, long-haired European when Jesus was Jewish and lived in the Middle East?

The Bible gives us very little detail about what Jesus looked like physically, and as it turns out, God wants it that way.

The challenge of relating

Knowing what someone looks like seems fundamental to relationships. Our friends and acquaintances are etched in our minds by their faces.

But with Jesus Christ, the One Christians strive to be closest to, that visual element is missing. The apostles, who spent 3½ years walking beside Him during His ministry, could describe what they saw with their eyes, heard with their ears and touched with their hands (1 John 1:1). But for us, and for the vast majority of Christians throughout history, Jesus’ actual face remains a mystery.

This raises an important question: Why would God choose to leave out of His Word a detailed description of His Son?

It’s worth considering why the visual aspect of Jesus, which some assign so much importance to, is something God omitted from the Bible.

Seeing isn’t necessarily believing

John 2:24-25 highlights a particular human weakness. At this point in the story, Jesus’ ministry was taking off in a big way. He was preaching with authority, performing miracles and drawing throngs of people who eagerly professed to believe in Him. The excitement about Jesus was palpable.

For 2,000 years, most Christians have belonged to a group Jesus singled out as unique: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). But we find that “Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man” (emphasis added throughout).

Enthusiasm is one thing, but genuine belief is another. Jesus knew the weakness of human nature—He knew their “faith” wasn’t rooted in the substance of His message or the force of His character. It was driven by the immediate and visible miracles that He performed.

Their interest in Jesus was limited to what He could prove to them through tangible experiences—things they could see or feel directly.

Jesus knew then, as He knows now, what is in man.

We see a similar pattern in the desire for a photo or image of Jesus. People crave something tangible that can make their belief feel more real, grounded in what they can see and touch.

So, artists create images to make Jesus more concrete, to make worship feel more substantive. But this ends up actually diminishing Him. We can miss the point that God wants us to know Christ in a deeper, more profound way.

As Paul wrote, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ is the one who shined in our hearts to give us the light of the glorious knowledge of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6, NET Bible).

Since we don’t have inspired drawings of Jesus and have not much about His appearance, God must reveal His Son in other ways. There are essentially two vehicles God uses to give this knowledge to us.

Scripture as a window

The first way we learn about Jesus is through Scripture.

The four Gospels are more than just a plot point in the arc of God’s plan for humanity—they are a window into the mind and character of Jesus Christ.

It’s through Scripture that we learn Jesus was kind and affectionate, welcoming children into His arms even when His disciples tried to turn them away (Mark 10:13-16). It’s through Scripture that we see His deep compassion for the weak and vulnerable. It’s through Scripture that we understand Jesus had a tender heart for those who were misguided and exploited by others, seeing them as “sheep having no shepherd” (Matthew 9:36-37).

We can also read about other facets of Jesus Christ—that He valued quiet time, often slipping away for prayer and reflection (Luke 5:16; Mark 1:35); that He relished the company of others (Luke 7:34); that He addressed large crowds but also taught in intimate, personal settings (Mark 4:34; John 4:7-26).

Jesus was all about justice, but He was also full of mercy. He was bold and brave (John 2:15-16), yet gentle and humble (Matthew 11:29). In every respect, Jesus perfectly reflected God the Father.

Now, imagine giving even the world’s most skilled artist the job of capturing this kind of character in a drawing or painting. It quickly becomes clear just how impossible that task would be. The glorious mind and character of Jesus simply can’t be illustrated without misrepresenting or grossly limiting Him.

No, we don’t have images or photos of Jesus, but we have something far better—a more fulfilling way to know Him. We have the record of His personal example.

Learning by doing

The second way God conveys the precious knowledge of His Son is through the Holy Spirit.

In Scripture, different descriptors are associated with God’s Spirit to help us grasp what it can accomplish in a Christian’s life. One of these is “the Spirit of wisdom and understanding” (Isaiah 11:2).

When we look at the Gospel accounts, we see that they’re fundamentally a collection of words. Our responsibility is to connect those words, form concepts, internalize their meanings and let them guide our daily lives.

But here’s the challenge: we’re always tempted to read too much into certain parts or cherry-pick what we want to believe, while ignoring the rest. This means we constantly face the danger of trying to shape Jesus into who we want Him to be, rather than seeing Him as He truly is.

This is where the Spirit of understanding can come to our aid. Learning the profound truths about Jesus Christ is a gradual process, but God, through His Spirit, gives us the discernment we need. He gives us the understanding to help us make the right connections, reach the correct conclusions and piece together a faithful picture of Christ—one that we can strive to reflect.

But the Spirit’s role in helping us know Christ goes even deeper.

The apostle John makes a crucial observation: “Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments” (1 John 2:3). The Amplified Bible puts it this way: “And this is how we know [daily, by experience] that we have come to know Him [to understand Him and be more deeply acquainted with Him]: if we habitually keep [focused on His precepts and obey] His commandments.”

One distinctive feature of the Holy Spirit is its power to help us obey God (Romans 8:4-5), which opens the door to knowing Christ in a much deeper, more intimate way. When we obey God, which was Jesus’ motivation His entire life, we move beyond just having head knowledge about the Son. We start to know Him through experience.

In other words, we learn by doing.

While we can know Jesus to some extent just by reading Scripture, the real learning occurs when we use the Spirit to live out His example in our own lives. This gives us a personal, firsthand understanding of Him—a kind of knowledge that works from the inside out.

For those of us who have God’s Spirit, truly knowing Jesus involves letting His example shape the way we think and act. It’s about seeing Christ’s character growing in our own lives as we follow His lead.

The true knowledge of God

For 2,000 years, most Christians have belonged to a group Jesus singled out as unique: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

Our belief in Jesus isn’t based on superficial artistic interpretations; it’s anchored to the eternal foundation of God’s Word and Spirit.

The ultimate understanding of Christ won’t be realized until the resurrection, when we shed our mortal bodies and finally see our Creator for who He truly is. As John wrote, “We know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).

Until that day, His Word and Spirit are more than enough to give us the knowledge of Christ, far surpassing anything an image or photograph could ever convey.

For further insight, see our online article “Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?”