For lack of a better term, Jesus is…complex. However, people tend to overlook His complexity. They focus on the aspect of Jesus’ character or personality that reassures them while neglecting the rest.
Many choose to focus on His love, compassion, and forgiveness. I took a poll at my house and the stories mentioned were about helping people solve unsolvable problems of illness and death. Jesus certainly spent much of His time caring for others both physically and spiritually.
Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. -Matthew 9:35-36
This passage sums up Jesus—loving the sick, loving the heart-broken, loving the lost, and willing to do something to help. This Jesus is easy to come to. However, this was not all Jesus’ character entailed. Remember, Jesus is complex.
One of the other popular traits is Jesus’ humility. They hold up Jesus (and rightly so) as a model for Christians to measure themselves by in their service of others.
Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God, got up from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself. Then He poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded. -John 13:3-5
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. -Philippians 2:5-11
These passages sum up Jesus—willing to do the dirty work, willing to become like man, and willing to obey the Father despite dire consequences. This Jesus is easy to come to. However, this was not all Jesus’ character entailed. Remember, Jesus is complex.
Jesus is indeed overflowing with love, compassion, and forgiveness. He is also the poster boy for perfect humility. It is good to dwell on these characteristics, emulating them in our lives. Only focusing on these aspects though gives people an incomplete, inaccurate picture of who Jesus really is. He is so much more than that! Stay tuned next week for the less-talked about facets of our Savior.