{"id":154,"date":"2007-08-01T10:31:59","date_gmt":"2007-08-01T14:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/godandculture.wordpress.com\/2007\/08\/01\/why-john-piper-is-wrong-about-racially-diverse-images-of-jesus\/"},"modified":"2007-08-01T10:31:59","modified_gmt":"2007-08-01T14:31:59","slug":"why-john-piper-is-wrong-about-racially-diverse-images-of-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/why-john-piper-is-wrong-about-racially-diverse-images-of-jesus","title":{"rendered":"Why John Piper is wrong about racially diverse images of Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week in a post at the DesiringGod blog<\/a>, John Piper responded to a question about portraits or pictures of Jesus. Part of what he said:<\/p>\n

I’m a little hesitant about portraits of Jesus at all. There’s that argument about whether that’s breaking the first Commandment — don’t make any graven images, don’t have pictures of Jesus in your house. The reason I’m not a stickler on that is because Jesus became incarnate, therefore we know he had a face. God the father didn’t have a face, except insofar as He and the Son are one.<\/p>\n

\"jesus-face-29.jpg\"<\/a>Jesus had a face and even though we don’t know what it looked like I think renderings of it to show various things are okay. And if we’re going to do that, they should be real diverse. I think they should be real diverse because you lock in on that famous one–I don’t know what it’s called, the one with the long hair, kind of the idyllic face and the blue eyes—that’s absolutely absurd.<\/p>\n

But I think there should probably be black portrayals of Jesus, and white portrayals of Jesus, and Chinese portrayals of Jesus. And everybody knows that they’re not accurate. There isn’t one that’s accurate. That’s why it’s legitimate to do lots of inaccurate works. Because you just say we all know that we don’t know what he looked like so what we want to say with our inaccurate Jesus is something true about Jesus. Namely, he’s there for everybody.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On what basis should there be “black portrayals of Jesus,” and “white portrayals of Jesus,” and “Chinese portrayals of Jesus”? Piper bases his reasoning on the fact that any portrayal of Jesus is inaccurate, so why not say something that is true about Jesus in the midst of the inaccuracy: “Namely, he’s there for everybody.”<\/p>\n

But do racially diverse images of Jesus really convey the message that Jesus is “there for everybody”?\u00a0Does the fact that Jesus indeed was God incarnate in the flesh of a Jewish male, and not in the flesh of a African male, or a European male, or a Chinese male, make it any less true that “he’s there for everybody”? The image is the shadow, the type. The incarnation is the real thing. Is the real incarnation of Jesus in a non-diverse image therefore not effective in\u00a0conveying the truth that\u00a0Jesus is “there for everybody<\/em>“? I know<\/em> Dr. Piper does not believe that!<\/p>\n

Jesus was not incarnated in reality <\/em>in the form of every race<\/em>. He “took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men<\/em>.” He was found “in fashion as a man<\/em>” (Philippians 2:7,8). Biblically speaking, Jesus shows that he is indeed there for all of humanity in the incarnation: “Forasmuch then as children are partakers of flesh and blood, he himself likewise took part of the same” (Hebrews 2:14) It is Jesus’ HUMANITY – not his race – that demonstrates he is “there for us.”\u00a0And in his humanity as a Jewish male “he redeemed us to God by his blood <\/strong>out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” making us a new nation – a kingdom of priests – a people for his own possession without regard to race (1 Peter 2:9).<\/p>\n

To suggest that we need racially diverse images of Jesus cheapens the reality. The reality is that Jesus, through his humanity and as God in human flesh, died to banish racial, social and class distinctives. In Christ we “…have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him<\/em>: here there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all<\/strong>” (Colossians 3:10,11). All the nations of men are made “of one blood” (Acts 17:26) and are redeemed by “his own\u00a0blood” (Hebrews 9:11-15).<\/p>\n

We don’t need white images of Jesus, black images of Jesus, Chinese images of Jesus, or even Jewish images of Jesus. We need Jesus<\/em>! “That I may know HIM, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death” (Philippians 3:10). The image is a mere distraction from the reality that is the person of Christ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week in a post at the DesiringGod blog, John Piper responded to a question about portraits or pictures of Jesus. Part of what he said: I’m a little hesitant about portraits of Jesus at all. There’s that argument about … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}