The Models of "Reflections": Finding the Faces that Represent the Savior’s Compassion

In November 2007, in the high desert outside Tucson, Arizona, a man named Robert stood tied to a wooden cross for about thirty minutes while it rained. He was shirtless. It was cold. He never complained, never asked for a break, never once broke character. I was behind the camera thinking, this is not a performance. This is a man letting himself be used.

Robert runs a small junk removal business and has an MBA. He is not a theater professional. He is just a man who took a sacred role seriously every time he put the robes on. He was the first face of Jesus in Reflections of Christ. And everything I learned about creating a realistic Jesus portrait began with him.

This article is about the men whose faces I borrowed to depict the Savior. It is also about the harder theological question underneath: what does biblical compassion actually look like on a human face, and how does an artist tell the truth about it?

Biblical Compassion vs. Modern Empathy in Christian Art

Before we talk about faces, we have to talk about the kind of compassion an artist is trying to depict. Because Christ's compassion is not the same as modern empathy, and if you do not know the difference, you will make the wrong art.

Biblical compassion is the visceral, Spirit-moved response to human suffering that always leads to action. The Greek word translated "compassion" in the Gospels means to be stirred in the gut. It is never passive. It feeds, heals, touches, weeps, forgives, and saves. It is love with sleeves rolled up.

Modern empathy and biblical compassion are not the same thing. This matters for anyone making art about Christ.

Empathy, as we use the word now, is mostly about feeling what another person feels. It is an emotional register. It can stop at sharing the feeling.

Biblical compassion does not stop there. It moves. "When he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd" (Matthew 9:36). The word translated "compassion" in the Greek is visceral. It means to be stirred in the gut. And it always leads to action: healing the leper, feeding the crowd, weeping at the tomb and then calling Lazarus out of it, taking up the cross.

That is the hard target for Christian art. A photograph of Jesus that only delivers soft, open-palmed sympathy is undercooked. The Christ of the Gospels feels, then acts. He is moved, then he moves. When I cast for Reflections of Christ, I was looking for men who could carry both ends of that arc in a single face. Tenderness that was going to do something about it.

The Models of "Reflections": Crafting a Realistic Jesus Portrait

I have had two different men portray Jesus across the Reflections project. They could not have been more different in temperament, ethnicity, or background. They taught me more about Christ together than either could have alone.

Robert: The Quiet Reverence

Robert was my first Jesus. I was shooting the original Reflections series in conjunction with an Easter Pageant in Arizona, and he was already cast as Christ in the production. The casting decision made itself. What did not make itself was the mood he brought to set.

When Robert put on the robes, he was in character. Not in the theatrical sense. He was in character in the sense that he knew how he was being seen, and that awareness made him carry himself with a kind of reverence that changed the whole crew. It was not method acting. It was a man honoring a role he had been entrusted with.

We shot the baptism in a pond in Arivaca, Arizona that stood in for the River Jordan. The water was freezing. Robert walked out into it with the actor playing John the Baptist, put his arm around John's shoulder, and smiled. When the baptism take happened, he went under and came up laughing a little and embraced John like an old friend. It was not staged. It was a MOMENT OF REAL HUMAN CONNECTION inside a scene about covenant. That moment is the image we titled "Joy", and it is one of the most requested pieces in the whole Reflections collection because you can feel the warmth between the two men even through the print.

The next day we shot the crucifixion. Robert spent about thirty minutes tied to a cross in cold November desert rain. He never complained. Between takes, at lunch, when the robes were off, he wanted to talk about the gospel. Not about himself. About Christ.

The realistic Jesus portrait you see in our crucifixion images from Reflections of Christ is Robert's face because Robert's face was already carrying something before I clicked the shutter. I did not direct it into him. I caught it coming off him.

Ofi: The Sunlit Compassion

In 2019 I shot another set of images. Robert was around fifty by then, and the timeline I was depicting called for a younger Christ. I needed to find someone else.

I found Ofi the way most of the important things in my life have happened. My daughter told me to. I watched him play a gig where she was also performing, and on the car ride home she said, "Dad, he should be your next Jesus." The things my kids get to say that make no sense to anyone else.

Ofi was a professional rock and roll musician and a man of deep faith. He was mixed ethnicity, Native American, African, French, and Samoan. That surprised some audiences, and I understood why. We have inherited a Eurocentric Jesus from four hundred years of Western painting. But here is the thing. I DO NOT CARE HOW WE SEE JESUS. I CARE HOW WE FEEL HIM. And Ofi made people feel Him.

Ofi was like the sun on set. He had an electricity that made the whole crew lean in. He was not afraid to laugh, to joke about how good he looked in the robes, to hug a costumer, to weep when a scene landed. He learned everyone's names, every helper, every assistant, and he made sure each one of them felt seen and loved. Between takes he talked about sports and music and finding a girlfriend. He was a person.

And when the camera rolled, that warmth converted directly into the face of Christ without any loss in the translation.

What Two Jesuses Taught Me

I worked with two very different men in the role of Christ, and the thing that struck me most was the dynamic range between their personalities, and the fact that nothing either one of them did ever felt un-Christlike. One was quiet, reverent, private, a man of deliberate weight. One was warm, loud, playful, a hug-first evangelist. Neither betrayed the role.

What I learned from that is simple and staggering. THERE ARE LIMITLESS WAYS TO BE GOOD AND GENTLE AND KIND. The Jesus I now picture in my prayer life is not a single temperament. He is the one who wept at Lazarus's tomb and who let the children climb on Him, the one who turned over tables and who washed feet, the one who fell silent before Pilate and who laughed with fishermen. Robert showed me the reverent Christ. Ofi showed me the warm Christ. Both were telling the truth.

How a Realistic Jesus Portrait Aids Spiritual Reflection

There is an old Christian practice called Visio Divina, "divine seeing," where the worshiper holds their gaze on a sacred image the way they would hold their attention on a passage of scripture. It is not idolatry. It is contemplation. The image is a window, not an object of worship.

A realistic Jesus portrait serves that kind of reflection better than a stylized one, because realism cuts past the part of the brain that files religious images as "art" and reaches the part that remembers faces. When you see a real human face with real light on it, something in you shifts from analysis to presence.

This is why I keep making these images. Not because I think my photography is sufficient to capture the Savior. It is not. But because a real face of a real man honoring a sacred role can open a door in the viewer that stylized art sometimes cannot. I have heard it from a thousand collectors. Their kids walk up to the print and say "Jesus" and try to touch it. Old people stop and reflect. Everyone else pauses.

If you want Christ-centered art to deepen your faith, hang it where you will actually see it every day. In the room you wake up in. In the hallway your family walks a hundred times. In the office where you work through the hard stuff. Let the gaze of the image become a quiet part of your life. That is how Visio Divina works in an ordinary home.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did Jesus model compassion?

Jesus modeled compassion as visceral feeling that always led to action. He was "moved with compassion" when He saw the multitudes (Matthew 9:36) and then He healed, fed, taught, and wept with them. He touched lepers, dined with tax collectors, defended the woman taken in adultery, and called Lazarus out of the tomb. His compassion was never passive. It did something about the suffering it saw.

What are the three models of Christology?

Christology is the theological study of the person and nature of Jesus Christ. The three most common models are "Christology from above" (starting with Christ's divinity and descending into His incarnation), "Christology from below" (starting with the historical human Jesus and rising toward His divinity), and "Christology from the side" (beginning with His relational, covenantal life among people). Each offers a different entry point into the same mystery: fully God and fully human.

What are the 3 C's of spirituality?

The 3 C's of spirituality are commonly identified as contemplation, compassion, and community. Contemplation is the inward work of prayer, scripture, and silence. Compassion is the outward work of loving God's people in practical ways. Community is the shared life of the church that holds the other two together. Christian art can serve all three by creating space for contemplation, depicting compassion, and being shared within the community of believers.

Living Under the Gaze of Grace

The faces of Jesus in Reflections of Christ are Robert's and Ofi's. A junk removal entrepreneur with an MBA who carried quiet reverence into every frame, and a rock and roll musician of mixed heritage who loved everyone on set like it was his job. Neither of them is Christ. Both of them, for the moments I photographed, carried something of Him.

That is what a realistic Jesus portrait is for. It is not a claim that we know the historical face of the first-century man from Nazareth. It is a borrowed window onto the kind of compassion He had, given to us through the faces of men who were willing to stand in for Him with reverence.

If you want to bring that kind of image into your home, [browse the full Reflections of Christ gallery] to find the face that speaks to you. And if you are trying to deepen your own walk with Christ, hang something on a wall you pass every day, and let it do its quiet work.

HE LIVES. AND HE IS MORE COMPASSIONATE THAN ANY IMAGE CAN CONTAIN. But we make them anyway, because we were made to look for His face, and because He made us in His.