Hail, king of the road!

Jesus probably has the most number of portrait versions done using all sorts of media. He appears on greeting cards, notebooks, books, leaflets, shirts, handkerchiefs and button pins. Sometimes he is white, brown, black and anything in between. We see him as a helpless tiny baby, a teen nomad or a Spanish gypsy. His icons serve as an amulet against aswang, evil spirits and the freaks. On the road, they say he works best with the Virgin Mary, so you’ll find mother-and-son team on car and jeepney dashboards and stickers, bus windows and tricycle units. If that is the case, your car, life and health insurance companies are in better hands than you are.

If he were a living person, his income from royalties would have made him richer than the Queen. Or J.K. Rowling. And this handsome Jew would have even made it big in Hollywood.

People down the ages up until now have painted their images of him from beggar to freak. But what is he really like? What did the Bible say about his life as an ordinary human?

Old testament prophet Isaiah had a glimpse of who the Messiah was centuries before he was born. He calls him the “suffering servant”. Jesus was never a Jewish heartthrob during his time.

2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.