When people hear the word God they may think of a Perfect Being who is remote and removed from the messy world in which we live our messy lives. This God is the Supreme Being who has no personal face to show us.

Baxter Kruger says that people paint a face onto this faceless deity themselves out of their own pain or guilt or shame or fear. The face that you paint onto this distant deity may well be mean and menacing. A frowning face that is always down on you and judging you. When things go wrong in your life you may feel that this frowning deity is punishing you in some way because you don’t measure up to his demands. When things are going well you may feel you have to perform well in order to keep this menacing deity happy.

Jesus is the true Face of God. Thomas Torrance says, “When we look into the face of Jesus Christ and see there the very face of God, we know we have not seen and cannot see God anywhere else or in another way but in him, for he is God himself become human, and there is no God except the God who has come and meets us in Jesus”

We don’t paint the face of God onto a faceless deity out of our own darkness. The face of God himself has turned towards us in the human face of Jesus. That face is not ugly. It is THE beautiful face. For in the face of Jesus we see the free expression of God’s loving-kindness towards us. And that is beauty surpassing all other beauty.