Expression of Love (2013)
Pencil Drawing

Name: Expression of Love
Artist: Michael J.D. Linsner
Size: 15 in. × 15 in.
Year: 2013
Medium: Colored pencil on paper

The Story Behind Expression of Love

Of all the things I’ve ever made, this pencil drawing might be the most meaningful for me.

When I was a junior in high school, I set out to create a colored pencil drawing that I could enter into the annual church-affiliated fine arts festival that I regularly attended as a teenager. The theme for the year was “Expression of Love”, and as I thought about what I wanted to draw it didn’t take long for the idea to come.

I would attempt to capture the emotion of Jesus Christ’s face as he went to the cross, focusing on his facial expression as he carried out the most beautiful expressive act of love our world has ever known.

After my initial sketches, the first thing I drew was the eye. And, I didn’t normally do this, but as I progressed through the rest of the project I started at the bottom of the page and worked my way up. The result was that most of the drawing was finished long before I ever came to the point where I needed to draw the crown of thorns.

I wish I had a picture of it. Jesus’ face was completely clean. There was no blood. No cuts on his cheek. No tear in his eye.

Perfect.

Jesus’ face was perfect. And at that point I knew, without a doubt, this was the best drawing I had ever done.

It pained me to think of what I would have to do in order to finish it.

For me, in order to truly depict Jesus’ expression as he went to the cross, his face couldn’t be clean. It had to be bruised and bloody. In fact, the prophet Isaiah had said that the Messiah, the one who would save God’s people, would be beaten beyond recognition (Isaiah 52:14).

So, sparing the gruesome details, it became clear to me that as I included the crown of thorns, I would also have to draw on top of what I’d already completed. And the more I thought about it, the more I dreaded working on it. I couldn’t bear the thought of picking up that red pencil and drawing on top of what I’d already done—potentially ruining the drawing that I’d spent hours and hours working on.

But I knew I had to finish it.

Reluctantly, I picked up that red pencil, and with every stroke, I felt like I was defacing my own drawing.

And that’s when it happened.

In that moment, I realized that the emotions I was feeling toward my drawing were, in a very small way, the same kinds of emotions that the Father must have felt as he watched the Son be crucified.

Jesus was perfect. Spotless. Without sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). And while working on this project, it felt as if God was allowing me to experience just a small taste of what it was like for him to watch his Son be crucified and to lay on him the iniquities of us all (Isaiah 53:6).

Not only that, but he also reminded me, in a very visceral way, that my sins were what put Jesus on that cross (Romans 3:23). In a very real and tangible way, I was the one who put the cuts on Jesus’ face. I was the one who put the bruises on his cheek. I shoved the thorns into his brow and put the tear in his eye.

In a way I hadn’t understood it before, I understood . . . God died for me.

And he died for you too.

“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8 ESV).

This is the love of Christ—his beautiful expression of love.

Receive it.