The following description of Christ comes closest to how I see Him as any I ever read. 

  "The primitive followers of the Christian faith were all of one heart and mind; and that was a heart of free and natural joy. Yet they were disciples of one who is known to all ages as the Man of sorrows; of one serene indeed in spirit, and of a strength divine and clear; but with the tinge throughout of a sad earnestness, -- some times flushing up into a transient glow of hope, --- rarely deepening into the shade of a visible anguish; and yet throughout, from the wrestling’s in the desert to his cry upon the cross, showing itself in miracles of pity and in nights of prayer; in the light of his love and the flash of his invective, --- his delight in nature and in childhood, his abhorrence of Pharisees and hypocrites; in the deep beauty of his parables, and the melancholy wisdom of his prophecies; in the sedate unity of his life and the quiet majesty of his death. How indeed is he represented by the emblem in which Christendom has embodied its veneration? The crucifix is the accepted symbol of grief divinely borne." James Martineau.