Altogether lovely

When Psalm 45:2 says Christ “art fairer than the children of men,” that’s His person; that’s who He is!

Jordan says, “Some people suggest Christ wasn’t really a fair-looking, handsome, good-looking guy. They argue that to call Him, ‘Fairest Lord Jesus,’ wouldn’t be a good way to describe Him. They point to Isaiah 52:13 and the idea there that He’s not somebody who’s going to be good to look at."

Isaiah 53:2 reads, “For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.”

Jordan explains, “People say, ‘Well, his physical visage was not attractive to people.’ But, you know, there are two things about that. First, this passage in Isaiah 53—when it says 'He has no form or comeliness,' that’s true, but what’s it talking about? He’s despised and rejected among men. Well, that’s what chapter 52:14 is talking about.

“He didn’t start out marred and no beauty in Him! When did that happen? That’s the Cross. You see Him being 'so marred more than any man.' The brutalities described in Matthew 26 and 27 that were heaped upon Him produced this horrible picture.

“You know, you look at artists when they draw the picture of the Cross and it’s always fascinated me—you can tell right away it’s an Italian Roman Catholic drawing the pictures. He’s this blue-eyed, blond-haired, sweet-looking little ‘hmm-ahh.’ But you read this stuff and, when was the last time you saw a son of Abraham that looked like that?! Nah.

“Song of Solomon has the only physical description of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it says he had hair that was bushy and black like a raven. He was brown-eyed and had black hair. He didn’t have the picture you get in the mythology! You know, (Warner) Sallman’s picture of Christ and all that kind of stuff. That’s just stuff.

“When the psalmist back here calls him ‘thou art fairer than the children of men,’ in other words, He’s the prototype man. He’s the hero. He’s the son of what God wanted man to be. It would obviously have to do with Him simply not at the Cross but in His resurrection. Psalm 45 is describing the Lord in resurrection; describing glorified humanity.

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“Now in His person—of course His personage would be more than His physical appearance—it would be in the nature that He had and in the way He would deal with people. In the virtue that His character would display.

“I love that verse that talks about the woman that touched the hem of His garment. It’s a strange verse. It says and virtue went out of Him. Would anybody ever say that about you? I mean, most of us have enough trouble getting a little virtue in us! We don’t need to send it out of us!

“But that healing power that went out of Him into that woman and healed her, the Scripture calls that ‘virtue’ and that’s exactly the right translation, by the way. In other words, there was a virtue that just overflowed out of Him, and in His person He was fairer—‘He was fairer than the sons of men,’ the verse says.

“So when it describes him, it says, ‘He was altogether lovely. He was the lily of the valley.’ There’s a song like that: ‘Bright and morning star and he’s the altogether lovely to my soul.’

"It’s wonderful when you got a bunch of songs that describe and glorify and extoll the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. You just can’t get enough of that; at least you shouldn’t be able to.”