“Is it right to depict Christ with long hair?”

QUESTION: In view of 1 Corinthians 11:14, that it is a shame for a man to have long hair, is it right to depict Christ with long hair?

ANSWER: Certainly the Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son, who always did those things that pleased the Father (Jn. 8:29), would not have done anything that God designates as shameful. He suffered and endured much from wicked men who reproached Him and shamefully mistreated Him. But He Himself honored God in all His ways.

God has not seen fit to give us pictures of His beloved Son. He gives us word descriptions of Him, but no pictures. Let me go off on a little tangent. Israel of old was commanded not to make images of anything in heaven or earth, nor to bow down to images nor serve them. Christians today are not under the Law, but the Law, as all the rest of Scripture, is given for our instruction. Today, we also are in danger of creating idols for ourselves, whether people or things. The advertising industry capitalizes upon this propensity. Think too of how many young people's rooms are decorated with posters of entertainers and athletes of all descriptions. Nor is this tendency confined to young people! Race cars, motorcycles, scantily dressed women (and men), are just a few of the many idols that appeal to the human heart!

God would not have us add His Son to all the stars we idolize in this way! His Word tells us that "even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer" (2 Cor. 5:16). When God tells us, "Behold! My Servant," He goes on to describe, not His physical but His moral features (Isa. 42:4). He shares with us touching details of His moral beauties and His cruel sufferings in Isaiah 53. This chapter, by the way, also lets us know that Christ was not characterized by outstanding physical attractiveness, telling us, "He has no form nor comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him" (Isa. 53:2). Nowhere in the Gospels are we given a description of His physical appearance. But the Epistles give us glorious descriptions of His present exaltation at God's right hand. The Revelation, written in highly symbolic language, shows Him to us in His judicial majesty and ultimate glory.

Many of the artists who have sought to portray the man, Christ Jesus, have been godly men and women who wished to honor the Savior. Their attempts have often been their own personal idealizations of the altogether lovely One. But how much better it would be for us to concentrate on God's own presentations of His beloved Son in the Bible!

One more comment as to the question of picturing Christ with long hair. Until approximately World War 1, women in Western society did not ordinarily cut their hair; this was, and is, long hair in the scriptural sense. Men, by contrast, cut their hair, but often not to the degree we think of as normal for men today. Artists have always tended to portray people as they were accustomed to seeing them. Perhaps this too may be, at least in part, the reason why so many have pictured the Lord with what we term "long hair" when we think of a man. Others have accepted and followed the trend, and thus the idealization of Christ's physical appearance has become so commonplace that even young children today identify the well known Man on many pictures as being Jesus.

By Eugene P. Vedder, Jr.