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Biblical Portraits of Jesus

Jesus Redeemer

One of the principal ways the New Testament presents Jesus is as Redeemer, the man amongst mankind who experiences their sufferings but who suffers on behalf of others, enabling them to be blessed, forgiven—to be saved.

The pattern of the redeemer-figure is established in the Old Testament. The key texts are those of the anonymous prophet of the period of Israel’s collapse and exile in the sixth century BC.

The Hebrew people had experienced the worst events in their history, a time of infidelity to their God who had, they understood, pledged himself to them in a covenant of loving kindness and justice. The destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, the loss of the Ark of the Covenant (the structure containing the Ten Commandments, their covenant law)—all was seen as The Day of the Lord, a day of doom (justice), but because of the fidelity of God, a day of hope (salvation). The majority of the population of the kingdom of Judah was taken into exile in Babylon.

This context of bitter experience is a context of suffering in which the redeemer-figure can emerge.

The anonymous prophet in the second part of Isaiah seems to be a literary hero, a personality who embodies the best qualities of Israel, and is depicted as a prophet and redeemer. He is presented in the traditional Servant Songs, which begin at chapter 42 of the Book of Isaiah. This figure is a character with a special mission and destiny. He is beloved by God, chosen, filled with the very spirit of God himself. His style is not that of power but of gentleness. If a flame is still smoldering, he will not extinguish it. If a reed is bruised, he will not break it. But this gentleness has strength and will enable true justice to be done, not only for his people but for those far beyond. He is described as a light of the nations (Isaiah 42:1–6).

This kind of figure, no matter how admirable, does not win acclaim from all. When people are challenged, when different values threaten an accepted way of life, reaction is hostile. So it was with the anonymous figure, who is also called the Servant. He is attacked emotionally and physically. But, with his sense of mission, he listens like a disciple to his God, and with his convictions, he holds firm. This leads to mockery, abuse, degradation, and death.

The image offered is that of the sacrificial lamb. However, the writer realizes that while those who see this “man of sorrows” are appalled, his willingness to endure the suffering is a jolt to those who watch. The Servant going to suffering and death is “a man for others.”

The jolt, the challenge, can be what we might call an experience of grace for others, a change of heart (a repentance) that enables them to redeem the evil in their lives. The Servant is, therefore, a redeemer. While the Old Testament texts speak of his being acknowledged (glorified) by God, the emphasis is on his suffering and death: laying down of life for love and for the benefit of others (cf. Isaiah 52:12–53:12).

Readers of the Old Testament appreciated the servant-figure in connection with other suffering figures. Just prior to the exile, the most human of the prophets, Jeremiah, exercised a faithful ministry—but at great personal cost. Even the story of his prophetic call shows him as quite reluctant. He was not listened to. Crowds scorned him. The king literally cut up and burned the scrolls of his oracle. He was thrown into a pit. Yet ultimately he “committed” his cause to God.

There are powerful passages, called his “confessions,” in which he berates God, threatens to sue him and take him to court; he laments the day he was born. Unlike the men of his day who found immortality in their children, Jeremiah was asked to be celibate. Yet he confesses that there is a fire in him that drives him on to be a prophetic redeemer (cf. Jeremiah 15:15–18). Prayers of suffering are found throughout the Psalms.

The other Old Testament figure of anguish and endurance is that of Job. He is described as God’s victim. God allows one member of his heavenly court (according to the Old Testament mentality), Satan (the devil’s advocate), to test, to plague Job. It is well known that Job did not curse God in any way. He suffered, though not silently, because he wanted to know why he suffered; he knew he was in no way a sinner despite the carping of his friends (or comforters!).

Job is the symbol of all those innocent victims, the endurers who have to acknowledge the mystery of human existence and throw themselves on the mystery of God’s ultimate providence and love (cf. Job 3:1–26; 19:23–27).

These are the patterns for the New Testament presentation of Jesus. He is seen as Redeemer. While, like the Servant, he is beloved by God, he is baptized by John the Baptist among the repentant sinners in the Jordan. The Letter to the Hebrews highlights that he is “a man like us, with the exception of sin” (Hebrews 4:15), and that though ultimately he is raised and glorified by the Father, he knows human sufferings since he has endured them (Hebrews 5:7–10).

In Gethsemane, Jesus is ignored by sleeping friends, sweats blood, experiences agony and sudden fear, and is prepared to endure, like the Servant, the scorn of religious authorities who have continually tried to trap him. He knows the fickleness of the loyalty of friends and followers, the physical abuse and torture of his Passion, the seeming absence of and abandonment by God on his cross. He is the timeless image of the man of sorrows, the sacrificial lamb for others.

In the first letter of Peter, the author states directly that he sees Jesus as the redeemer-figure and quotes the Servant Songs of the Old Testament for his proof.

The pattern of Jesus as the man of sorrows, the man who died for humankind while forgiving his killers, has become part of the consciousness of Western culture. Believers and unbelievers alike have been able to draw on the experience of Jesus as a metaphor or as a symbol of the suffering that does not turn in on itself in despair or bitterness but is offered to others for support, courage, or endurance. The instrument of Jesus’ death, the cross, has become the sign of this suffering for others.

This image of Jesus as Redeemer has become in the arts the reference point for stories of innocent sufferers, so that they can be understood as Christ-figures, redeemer-figures.

Jesus Savior

In the New Testament Jesus is called Lord. After his living as a human being, like us—sin excepted—he was raised from the dead, the risen Savior who leads the way to joy, peace—the salvation of heaven.

The first striking Old Testament story concerns Abraham, the head of a large clan on the now Persian Gulf who, like many clans of the time (about 1800 BC), took part in nomadic migrations. Abraham’s clan eventually settled in the land of Canaan, later Palestine, which became for them home, a promised land, rich and fruitful, flowing with milk and honey. Though much of it was arid mountain and desert, it was, nevertheless, their paradise homeland.

However, the reason for Abraham’s migration was his experience of his God. He felt a sense of call, of destiny for himself and his descendants; not just the establishing of a dynasty, but a people responsible to their God and devoted to him, a “chosen” people. We remember that the early centuries of their history were marked by squabbles and bitterness, but also by joy and reconciliation.

After many of them stayed in Egypt for hundreds of years, they were oppressed by the pharaoh, made slaves, and, in a mass escape led by Moses, went out of Egypt into the desert, forming themselves into a people, exhilarated by liberation, on their way back home to the land of Abraham, a promised land that they saw as their inheritance.

Old Testament writers, listening to the stories remembered and repeated from these times and passed on orally for generations, realized that there was a deep religious meaning in these events. Their God had acted for them in their history. They were oppressed and needed liberating. He freed them, he saved them. They were a sinful people. He freed them from their sinfulness, he forgave them. They were a chosen people, and their God had pledged himself to them—to be just, loving, and faithful no matter how unfaithful his people were.

This union of God and his people, this covenant (with its laws, especially the Ten Commandments) became the sign of salvation. Old Testament personages were remembered and written of in connection with this covenant: leaders like Moses and Joshua, the judge Samuel, Kings Saul, David, and Solomon.

Needless to say, chosen people do not remain faithful. They turn away from their fidelity in personal sin, social sin, especially injustice. They need forgiveness and salvation. In the Old Testament history of Israel, the main figures who embodied this message of salvation were the prophets, a group who, intermittently, for over two hundred years, showed by their words, by their oracles, by their symbolic actions, and by their own lives that God was a saving God.

In looking at the religious experience and the messages of such diverse personalities as the rugged shepherd Amos, the tender Hosea, the statesman Isaiah, the reluctant and persecuted Jeremiah, and the exotic Ezekiel, we see God’s fidelity to his people in offering his salvation.

It was little wonder that New Testament writers drew on covenant themes—and especially the experiences and words of the prophets—when they wanted to show that Jesus was a savior. It is the constant theme of the Gospels that Jesus was this kind of figure: a prophetic Savior.

A phrase that the Old Testament prophets used was “The Day of the Lord.” For a while, the Hebrew people were presumptuous enough to think that this meant that God would sweep away all their enemies, and they would live in power, prosperity, and peace. (Many Zealots of Jesus’ day still had the same hope and followed Jesus because of it but were disappointed when he was found not to be the restorer of the kingdom of Israel.) What the prophets really meant by “The Day of the Lord” was a day both of justice and salvation. There would be justice because the evil in the hearts and actions of the people would inevitably bring down on themselves some decay, moral weakness, and destruction. This was interpreted as the hand of the Lord striking them.

But The Day of the Lord was also the time for reassessment, a change of heart—repentance—a humble and more realistic attitude so that whatever the disaster and destruction, a renewed fidelity could carry the people through. They might only be few: a remnant. But they could be the foundation of a renewed growth. Prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel said that for people like this, God would take out their hard hearts (like stone) and put in hearts of flesh, making them a “fresh-hearted” remnant, people with “new heart.” It would be a second covenant. We recognize this promise as the language of Jesus and of the New Testament.

The Hebrew people were not a nation of scholarly philosophers. Rather, they were imaginative, poetic, a people of experience, especially religious experience. The way they expressed themselves was in concrete rather than abstract language: new hearts, shepherds leading sheep to graze and rest, dry bones in a valley coming to life with flesh and becoming human again, fruitful vines, banquets of the best food and drink when those who are faithful are forgiven, healed, and gathered together to rejoice.

These images were developed over the centuries by many writers. For instance, David was a shepherd before becoming king; kings are seen as shepherds, bad kings being bad shepherds, good kings being good shepherds; the great king and, therefore, the good (best) shepherd is God himself, who listens to his sheep, guides them, and rescues them when they are lost. Jesus and the New Testament writers use these images for signs and symbols of salvation. They quickly became constant themes for Christian art, poetry, hymns. They still are. So many of Jesus’ own stories rely on this kind of imagery for their impact and meaning.

Even the servant-figure of the Old Testament who willingly gave his painful suffering and his death for the sake of others, is spoken of, finally, in words of joy and exultation. Every redeemer-figure is, ultimately, a savior. That is why Jesus’ Passion and death can be described so vividly in Old Testament language. But it is not a despairing description; there is hope.

The Christian meaning is death—and resurrection. J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, created a fine word to describe this connection between Jesus’ death and his Resurrection: eucatastrophe. The Greek word for “well” is eu. So for Tolkien (and for the Gospel writers)—for those who believe in salvation from God—suffering, which is real and painful, is, nevertheless, a eucatastrophe.

Jesus Liberator

With the rise of basic Christian communities during the 1970s and 1980s, especially in Latin America and in the Philippines, pastors and theologians looked at the violent and oppressive societies in which they lived. They saw that going back to the basics of the Gospels, especially in small communities that celebrated and listened to God’s word, would provide a spiritual and practical impetus in fighting for justice. However, many judged, rightly or wrongly, that this way of thinking was too strongly linked to Marxist philosophy and presuppositions (and so linked to his atheistic Communism), and proponents were condemned.

However, when one opens the scriptures and sees, for instance, the figure of Moses freeing his people from oppression (with some rather violent plagues and drownings in the Red Sea) and being the mediator of a covenant and law for the people, one sees a line that was pursued by Samuel and the prophets throughout Hebrew history. Moses was a liberator. Jesus, the new mediator and the new covenant, is also the Liberator: from oppression, from physical ailment, from the burdens of sin.

Jesus Priest, Prophet, and King

In her article “Christ Figures in the Movies,” Barbara Nicolosi makes a fine theological case for taking the lead from the Second Vatican Council’s focus on the person of Jesus and his mission and ministry. He is described as Priest, Prophet, and King.1

While she goes on to give examples of Christ-figures, her focus on Jesus is significant for the Jesus-figures in film.

The Priest, she notes and refers to Romans 1, is someone who is a living sacrifice to save or improve the lives of a community. This is a facet of Jesus as Redeemer.

The Prophet seeks out the people of God who have lost their way and leads them back into the embrace of God; he reminds people who they are and recalls them to their vocation to be a holy people. This is a facet of Jesus as Savior, especially when the Gospels draw specific parallels with Old Testament prophets in Jesus’ teaching, miracles, or symbolic actions. In Luke 7, all of these are highlighted: he is the new Elijah, raising a son from the dead for a widow; the new Isaiah, telling the disciples of John the Baptist that healing signs accompany his mission; the new Ezekiel, who plays beautiful songs to signify God’s coming; the new Hosea, who loves into forgiveness the woman who was the sinner in the city.

The King is the servant leader who unifies a broken and disrupted community, bringing peace and brotherhood, which Jesus did as he proceeded with joy into Jerusalem on a donkey and then more powerfully with his Spirit, which he breathed on his disciples in the upper room after his Resurrection. This is a facet of Jesus the Liberator.

Jesus “Holy Fool”

Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot reminds us that there has been a long art and literary tradition of “holy fools.” St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:18–31 knows that “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. . . . It was the will of God through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who have faith.” He goes on to say that Christ crucified is “foolishness” to the Gentiles even though he is the power and wisdom of God and that the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. In reminding the Corinthians that they were not wise by human standards, he tells them that God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise.

There is a long biblical tradition of wise fools. We might think of Abraham bargaining and wheedling with God for the salvation of Sodom and Gomorrah for ten just men or Jacob laboring for seven years to win the hand of Rachel. Joseph, even in his prison cell, is the wise fool who interprets the dreams of his fellow prisoners. David’s wife Michal considered him a fool as he exuberantly danced before the Ark of the Covenant.

We can interpret some of the prophets in this lineage: Amos being mocked in Bethel and ordered out of the city, Zephaniah rejoicing that his God was a dancing God, Jeremiah lamenting how he was despised and rejected, Tobit piously burying the dead against the law, and Daniel in the lions’ den are images of God’s fool.

Jesus himself can continually be seen as “foolish” for God: in his temptations in the desert, in experiencing the contempt of the Pharisees, in his mixing with tax collectors and prostitutes, in the popular stories he told, in the rumors spread by his enemies that he was possessed. The fact that he was betrayed by one of the twelve indicates foolhardiness in his choices.

It is in his Passion that we see images of Jesus as Holy Fool. Whether he is denied by Peter; scoffed at by Herod; ridiculed as the scourged and thorn-crowned king; standing like the suffering servant, silent before Pilate; or hanging on the cross abused by the religious leaders and the thief beside him—Jesus is portrayed as the Holy Fool. In his Resurrection, he is there for all to see as the one who transcends death, the risen Lord who is the wisdom and power of God.

Note

1. Barbara Nicolosi, “Christ Figures in the Movies,” Ligourian, February 2003.