Welcome back to the S. Pastor John podcast. We hope you had a wonderful Christmas weekend to reflect on the Savior and His birth and His sacrifice for us.

Jesus is beautiful and we talk about His beauty a lot as a way of fleshing out what it means to have faith and to treasure Christ for all that He is for us.

But He is fundamentally beautiful. That's common language for us here at D.G., but that language leads to a problem too and to a question from a podcast listener named Adam.

Pastor John, how does a masculine Christian, a man's man, see Jesus as beautiful? It's odd and uncomfortable for me, a man to look upon another man, even the God man, and say beautiful.

Yet I believe that expectation of men indeed all people is not only taught in Scripture, but a necessary ingredient to saving faith.

This is troublesome and quite unnerving to me. Can you help me come to terms with the awkwardness I feel here?

So should we feel awkward as men or Christians in general, women or men? Should we feel awkward, but especially men, seeing Jesus as beautiful?

That was the first thing he said, and then should we feel awkward to look upon the God man and say beautiful?

The answer is yes and no. Yes and no. If the term beautiful carries with it, connotations of any sensuality at all, there should be an awkwardness in calling Jesus beautiful.

Indeed, I would say if the preponderance of what we mean when we say beautiful in reference to Jesus refers to his physical appearance, we should feel awkward, and here are the reasons, a couple of reasons.

First, because when the Bible does talk about the physical appearance of the Son of Man on earth, it describes him as the opposite of beautiful.

Isaiah 53, too, he grew up before him like a young plant, like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look upon him and no beauty, no beauty, that we should desire him 52, 14.

As many were astonished at you, his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.

So we should get out of our minds all notions that calling Jesus beautiful says anything about his physical appearance while he was on the earth.

He was not physically beautiful as far as we know, and certainly not at the end of his life during his sufferings.

In his exalted state, his resurrection glorified body, the way he's described in Revelation 1, for example, it would be completely appropriate to attach the word beautiful in a very exalted way.

Here's what he says, I saw one like a son of man clothed in a long robe and with a golden sacks around his chest, the hairs of his head were white like wool like snow, his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace, his voice was like the roar of many waters.

In his right hand, he held seven stars and from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.

That man is beautiful, the way Niagara Falls is beautiful, the way the northern lights are beautiful, the way the Hubble telescopes pictures of the galaxies are beautiful.

Nevertheless, I still stand by my statement, if the preponderance of what we mean when we say beautiful in reference to Jesus refers to his physical appearance, even his glorified appearance, we should feel awkward because this is the main answer to Adam's question.

Because the reason that calling Jesus beautiful is never, neither in his incarnate state or his glorified state, then the reason is he's never called beautiful fully appropriately because of his physical appearance, no matter how glorious, but rather because of the excellence of his character and the greatness of his deeds.

When four jets, the Blue Angels, roar overhead with deafening thunder aiming at each other from the four points of the compass.

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