THE MAN part 2 UNREVEALED Rev. 1:13                              

HIS PREEMINENCE   And in the midst of the seven candlesticks

HIS PERSONALITY   one like unto a Son of man

When we examine the particulars of Jesus human appearance there is a stunning suddenness of how ordinary He looked. The woman of Samaria, who Jesus interacted with at the well in John 4:9, felt Jesus was just a racially intolerant Jew. The Jews were full of prejudice against all races. Her question reveals that Jesus looked like an average racist Hebrew. 

Isaiah 53 writes that there was nothing attractive about Him. There is nothing about His physique or face that would make anyone take any notice of Him. He was actually looked down on.

After Christ had been crucified, to the two men who were trekking on the Emmaus road, Jesus wasn’t recognizable. He had been taken down from the cross and buried. These two didn’t realize that He had blown the grave open and risen. He just looked like any other person on the trail, but He appeared out of it, since He wasn’t pessimistic about the current events of brutality where Jesus with all His claims had been beaten and tortured to death.  Luke 24:18.

Even after the resurrection when Jesus appeared in His glorified body, Mary at first mistook Him for the gardener John 20:15. We don’t know exactly but maybe He was leaning on a shovel.

His own close friends confused Him for another man when they returned from their fishing; trip John 21:4–5.

Could this be what John saw in the midst of the Church today, a Jesus that doesn’t stand out initially? Is He just a below average person in appearance and presentation?

When talking to Thomas, Jesus displayed His ordinary physical structure as a core for faith. “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see” Luke 24:39.

What a concept, handle me, and see; for a spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones, as you can see that’s what I have. He wasn’t made up of ectoplasm. Jesus is not in His present appearance an ethereal spiritualism. He isn’t some eerie substance emanated from the body of a medium during a trance. The Lord Jesus is not the outer granule-free layer of cytoplasm. He is a real, solid body. His body, the body they had seen being taken down from the tree to be placed in the tomb is now a body that is resurrected and ascended.

We don’t understand His body now. What kind of body is this where His Hands can be handled and feet that can be held? “When the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst” John 20:19. His new resurrected body is not limited by time and space and material. What an amazing body. He doesn’t need a door to enter a room. He is just there.

They were still not fully convinced. “And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have you here any meat? And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and honey. And He took it, and ate before them” Luke 24:41-43. He wasn’t a vegan. His resurrection body was real. He was able to sit down at a table and eat solid food. This is positive, prosaic, matter-of-fact proof. Is He any different now? Do we walk, talk and listen to a man? Is He really in our (midst) life as an ordinary man?