“Make your attitude that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be used for His own advantage.  Instead, He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of men.  And when He had come as a man in His external form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death– even to death on a cross.”

~Philippians 2.5-8

Jesus Christ put on flesh (John 1.14) , “taking on the likeness of men” (Philippians 2.7).  His identity as a human being is often a point of tension among believers.  We ask, “What did He look like?” But, what we are really asking is, “Who did He look like?”  We ask questions like these and others because we want Him to belong to us and to only us.  We want to claim Him as a member of our culture or country and subsequently, as a prize.  We do not want to know the culture that He belonged to for our information but for our exaltation.  But Christ’s appearance does not make Him more or less our Savior.  His identity and position as the Son of God is not impacted or determined by our acceptance of Him based on race.  And it was what He did not how he looked that made and continues to make the difference.

Christ didn’t come to the earth to be categorized.  He did not die for us in order that we might label Him. He didn’t come to save one cultural or socially colored group but the world (John 3.16).  The social coloring of Jesus Christ’s flesh does not legitimize His sacrifice on the cross.  It does not make his suffering more or less meaningful, powerful or effective.  He did not die for one more than another.

It does not matter whether His blood type was A, B or O, positive or negative.  The sacrifice did not call for “black blood” or “white blood”; it called for purity, a purity not found in culture but in character (Second Corinthians 5.21).  It called for a lamb without spot or blemish (First Peter 1.19).  Jesus was our lamb, the lamb of God (Isaiah 53.7; John 1.29).

In the same vein, we do not need Jesus to look like us or to identify more with our culture; instead, we should be attempting to ensure that we look more like Him, that He can identify us as one of His disciples.  Make your attitude that of Christ.  Don’t make Him equal to your social color or culture because He is above it all and everything exists because of, in and through Him.  Jesus put on flesh, which means that it was not a part of His identity as the Son of God before entering the earth.  He put on flesh in order to walk among us and to defeat sin in the flesh (Romans 8.3-4).  Don’t subject Him or His image to your social color or culture; instead, let the knowledge of His love for you color your actions.