I was born and raised in a Seventh-day Adventist Christian family, so Jesus was a familiar presence in our home. Although it took me a lifetime to discover the person behind the name, the basic features of His portrait began to take shape in my childhood, within my family and in the church.
In the earliest image of Jesus that I can recall, His face was marked by deep compassion. I’m not sure how that image first formed, but I remember my parents and church teachers telling us many stories about people who came to Jesus with various problems, and how He responded to them with compassion every time. One day, a man afflicted with leprosy asked Jesus to heal him; moved with compassion, Jesus did so (Mark 1:40–41). On another occasion, Jesus encountered a mother walking in grief behind the coffin of her only son. His first response was compassion; He told her, “Don’t cry,” and raised her son to life (Luke 7:12–14). When a crowd followed Him for three days simply because they enjoyed listening to Him and felt safe in His presence, Jesus had compassion on them—especially because they were hungry—and fed them (Mark 8:1–9; see also 6:34).
At that stage in my childhood, I did not yet understand who Jesus truly was, but I saw Him as someone ready to meet people with compassion. In some way, I came to feel that being compassionate like Him was the norm for life, and I expected everyone to be the same. In every difficult circumstance of my life, I saw Him treating me with compassion. And when I encountered people in hardship, I imagined that Jesus was showing them loving compassion—and calling me to do the same.
A second image of Jesus that took shape in my childhood came from an illustration. During the Soviet era, my father was involved in an evangelistic project that consisted of printing and distributing small, illustrated booklets with brief biblical messages. Although I spent hours leafing through those books, I have forgotten all of them except one, which remains etched in my memory.
At the bottom of the page was an illustration of a boy and a girl weeping bitterly at their mother’s grave. From where they stood, they could not see Jesus, who was shown with His arm outstretched toward the grave, holding an old-fashioned key in His hand. In the corner of the page, a Bible verse read: “I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Revelation 1:18).
As I studied the image, I again noticed the deeply compassionate expression on Jesus’ face. But in the moments that followed, I discovered something new about Him: He was majestic, radiating a distinct kind of power. No, the image did not portray Him as physically imposing. Rather, I came to understand, with a sense of awe, that His power came from within—from who He was and from what He was capable of doing. He had the power to raise the dead.
The power of His Resurrection
My parents’ house stood next to the village cemetery. In my childhood, I witnessed numerous and frequent funeral processions, all of which culminated in the same heartbreaking scene: people weeping in despair, bent over their deceased loved ones. Although I saw these tragic moments many times, they never became ordinary to me. Before I came across that illustrated booklet, I felt frustrated by my inability to find a solution to this fundamental human problem—one that even adults seemed powerless to resolve. The only thing I could offer was compassion.
But the image and message of that booklet changed the way I viewed funerals. I now understood that Jesus had compassion for those who mourned, but I also knew that He had the power to open those graves.
Only later did I come to realize that Jesus’ power over death lies at the very heart of Christianity. The historical event of His resurrection was an unprecedented display of power in human history. Although people resist death, humanity has largely resigned itself to it, because no one has seen the dead return to life. No one has been able to offer a credible solution to the problem of death—a reality that leaves even the strongest individuals feeling powerless. Yet Jesus died and rose again, “the firstfruits” of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:23). This is a manifestation of power unlike any other in history. This is the power of God.
Raised to a new life
Christ did not rise merely to demonstrate His power. He died and rose again so that we, too, might share in that same experience—so that we might receive “hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). The apostle Paul explains: “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. […] If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:13–19). But because Christ’s resurrection is a reality, Paul declares that his purpose in life was to know Christ and “the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10–12).
Christ’s resurrection was only “the firstfruits.” He was the first—and the only one—to conquer death and return to life (1 Corinthians 15:20–23), so that in Him we, too, may share in His resurrection and receive eternal life (John 3:16; 6:40; 11:25). The apostle Peter describes Christ’s resurrection as “a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3, 21; see also Acts 24:15). Our lives are shaped by this hope—the hope of resurrection and eternal life—and it is through this hope that we can genuinely comfort one another (1 Thessalonians 4:18).
The resurrection of Jesus is not only a hope for the future. It brings about a profound transformation in our lives and empowers us to live a new life here and now. Peter states that through Christ’s resurrection, the Father “has given us new birth” (1 Peter 1:3). The apostle Paul adds that when we are baptized, we are “buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:4).
Over time, I came to discover many other aspects of Jesus. Yet these two—His loving compassion and His power to raise the dead—proved essential in shaping His biblical portrait and were transformative in my own life. It is a joy to see and hear that many others are discovering and embracing these same qualities of Jesus.
Gheorghe Răzmeriţă reflects on his earliest understandings of the traits of Jesus, concluding that discovering Christ’s compassion and His power to raise the dead gave him hope for both the present and the future.