No Longer I : The Truth About Playing Jesus

An unbecoming to become

I remember the first time I caught myself staring at my reflection in a darkened window, wondering whose eyes were looking back at me. It had been six months since I began what I half-jokingly called "the experiment," though it wasn't really an experiment at all. More of a surrender. A dissolution. An unbecoming that somehow felt like finally becoming.

And it all started with those actors.

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“The truth is that I can’t put it into words exactly. There’s a lot of things that you are meant to feel and not to be explained. There aren’t words that can describe it, it was life changing for me, the result of that, I feel we can make a difference in this world,” Diogo Morgado, who plays Jesus in “Son of God”, describes his experience in an interview. ¹

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I've always been drawn to the stories of actors who portrayed Christ—not just the polished PR versions, but the raw, unfiltered aftermath. The strange, sometimes disturbing transformation that occurs when a person doesn't just play Jesus but somehow becomes a vessel for something transcendent. It's like watching someone touch a live wire and emerge both burned and illuminated.

What happens in that space of embodiment? What shifts in the cellular memory, in the psyche, in the soul when you don't just mimic divinity but invite it to possess you completely? For months, I've collected these stories, sensing a pattern - a mystery - I couldn't quite articulate. And somewhere along the way, the question changed from academic curiosity to personal invitation: What if I stopped trying to follow Jesus and instead allowed Him to live through me? Not in the sanitized, bumper-sticker "What Would Jesus Do" way, but in the terrifying Pauline surrender: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." What if I took that literally?

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"Everyday I feel privileged to play this part, to be sharing the experience. Living this story, it is impossible not to be affected by it. I think I am a much humbler person already. At the beginning I thought of this project merely in terms of a script and visual images. But having to say the words of this man, who changed the course of life and history, the character has come alive for me and his ideas have become real.” - Robert Powell who played Jesus in ‘Jesus of Nazareth’(1977) talks about his experience. ²

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The first morning I woke up and whispered to myself, "I am not myself today. Christ lives in me," I felt ridiculous. Blasphemous, even. Who was I to claim such a thing? A 23-year-old with student loan payments and a tendency to overthink everything, with a childhood memory of feeling never quite enough, and a quiet fear that my resume was sitting unread in some HR department's spam folder. The gap between divinity and my humanity felt like a cosmic joke.

But I persisted.

Each morning, the same mantra,: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." Not as affirmation but as surrender. Not claiming greatness but relinquishing the exhausting performance of being "me." The first changes were almost imperceptible. A strange pause before clicking away from my roommate's Netflix show to watch my own. A moment of genuine listening when my mom called, instead of half-attention while scrolling through Instagram. Small moments of a consciousness that didn't feel quite like my own familiar patterns. Then came the disorientation. If I am not "me," then who exactly is making these decisions? Whose preferences matter? Whose desires? Whose fears? The psychological vertigo was unexpected and, at times, terrifying. There's a reason we cling so desperately to our constructed identities. Without them, we face the void.

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“When you seek me with all your heart I will be found” (Jeremiah 29:13-14). That’s what that acting experience was for me. It put me in a position where I had to seek him with all my heart. My mind exploded with the Wow of him! And within that glimpse of understanding, all my priorities were rewritten, all my motivational foundations were rewritten, everything I thought was important was rewritten. Ah, but even beyond that, my sensitivities were rewritten”, Bruce Marchiano talks about how the role of Jesus in ‘Visual Bible: Matthew’ changed so much of his life.³

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Three months in, I found myself letting a friend borrow my bike without the usual internal calculation of what I'd get in return. It wasn't some grand gesture—he just needed to pick up a family member from the airport, and I had nowhere urgent to be. But the absence of my normal mental arithmetic—the weighing of favors, the subtle scorekeeping that had always characterized my relationships—left me disoriented. Who was this person making decisions without the constant orbit of self-interest?

A close friend had noticed the shift. "You seem different," he said one night as I gulped down the remaining non-alcoholic beer from my glass. "Not bad different. Just... I don't know... less worried about everything?" That was exactly it. The constant background hum of self-concern had quieted. Not because I'd achieved some spiritual breakthrough, but because the self doing the worrying was being slowly, painfully dismantled. What emerged in its place wasn't sainthood. Far from it. Without my carefully maintained identity to hide behind, I discovered wells of grief I'd never allowed myself to feel. Anger at a family member that I'd buried beneath "moving on." Insecurities about my worth that achievement had temporarily masked. Desires I'd disowned. Needs I'd never acknowledged. Is this what it means for Christ to live through me? This mess? This disassembled humanity?

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“It forced me into the arms of God”, Jim Caviezel recalls his experience playing Jesus in ‘The Passion of the Christ’. “That’s the only place I could go. That’s when God’s voice came to me. ‘Hey, don’t you worry about it. Let me take care of it, and will you allow me to use you to play?’ And that’s when I just said, ‘All right, I’m going to let you perform, and I’m going to step out of the way.’ “That was the key to this film. I didn’t want people to see me. I just wanted them to see the Christ.” ⁴

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One ordinary Tuesday night, my phone lit up with a text from a guy I'd known in undergrad—not even a close friend, just someone from a study group. "Can we talk? Going through some stuff." In my old life, I'd have sent a polite but distant reply. Asked what was up. Offered some generic encouragement. Maybe suggested coffee sometime soon, with no real intention of following through. Instead, I called him immediately. We talked for hours. About his girlfriend leaving. About his doubts about his career path. About the meaninglessness he felt creeping in around the edges of his life. I didn't offer solutions or platitudes. I just stayed with him in that dark place. When he apologized for "dumping all this" on me, I realized I felt no impatience, no subtle resentment at the intrusion. Just presence. Hanging up around midnight, a strange thought surfaced: I hadn't once considered how this conversation benefited me, how it reflected on me, what I was getting out of it. I had simply... shown up.

The paradox began to reveal itself: The more I surrendered "me," the more authentically human I became. Not superhuman. Not divine. But human as we were meant to be before we started hiding, grasping, performing, and protecting.

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"It's changed my relationship with God in that it has deepened profoundly and made me want to be more like Jesus in my day to day life, and not just to play Him. One of the things that keeps hitting me is you don't have to play Jesus on TV to be Jesus to the world. And I think that is what we are all called to do as believers," Jonathan Roumie — the man who plays Jesus in ‘The Chosen’ — said in an interview. ⁵

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The strangest part of all this? I began to recognize Christ in everyone else too. Not in some abstract, theological sense, but in flashes of immediate perception. The cashier at the grocery store with tired eyes—suddenly I could see the weight she carried, the divine spark dimmed but still present beneath exhaustion and routine. My dad, with all his emotional unavailability—suddenly his behavior made perfect sense as the protective shell of a man who never learned another way to be. This seeing changed everything. How could I move through the world with indifference when every interaction became sacramental? How could I maintain comfortable distance when I recognized myself—my true self beyond ego—in every person I encountered? "It is no longer I who live..." The "I" that dissolved wasn't my humanity but my illusion of separation. I began to understand why those actors were never the same after playing Jesus. It wasn't just the emotional toll of the performance or even the public's projected reverence afterward. It was that once you've experienced—even briefly, even partially—what it means to move through the world without the constraints of ego, ordinary consciousness becomes a kind of exile.

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When asked how he prepared himself for the role, Diogo Morgado responded, “Love. You just make yourself available to be full of love. And to be truthful and honest, 100%.” ⁶

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There are days I fail completely at this new way of being. Days I retreat into old patterns of self-protection and ego-driven reactions. Days I catch myself obsessively refreshing my email, hoping for interview requests, my worth once again tied to external validation. Days the divine presence feels like a distant memory rather than a current reality. On those days, I remind myself that even Jesus had moments of doubt, fatigue, and limitation. The difference is that I now recognize these failures not as evidence that the experiment has failed but as invitations to surrender even more deeply. To die to self again and again and again. This is the truth about "playing Jesus" that no one talks about—whether you're an actor portraying him on screen or just an ordinary person inviting his consciousness to live through you: It's not a role you perfect but a death you undergo. Repeatedly. Willingly. A continual crucifixion of the false self that enables the true self to emerge. What makes it bearable—even beautiful—is that on the other side of each small death is a kind of resurrection. A moment of living from a consciousness larger and more loving than your own. A glimpse of what we all could be if we stopped trying so hard to be ourselves.

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In his 2024 commencement remarks at The Catholic University of America, Jonathan Roumie said, “The first thing and most radical thing I’ve learned in my time playing Jesus is this: you don’t need to play Jesus for the world in order to be Jesus to the world…The more you commit, the deeper He takes you. The more you love Him, the higher you go. The more you seek Him, the wilder your journey gets.”⁷

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I haven't shared much about this journey until now. It felt too intimate, too easily misunderstood. People would either dismiss it as religious fanaticism or, worse, elevate it as spiritual accomplishment. It's neither. It's simply what happens when you take seriously the invitation at the heart of the Christian narrative: to become a vessel through which divine love enters the world. I don't know where this path leads ultimately. I'm still sending out resumes. Still figuring out what kind of career I want. Still dealing with my ordinary 23-year-old problems. But I know I can't go back to being the person I was before—compartmentalized, strategic, always maintaining a safe distance from my own life and from others. That person was a construct, a character I played convincingly but at great cost. What's emerging instead is both less defined and more authentic. Some days it feels like freedom; other days, it feels like freefall. Always, it feels more alive than the half-life I lived before. This is the secret that actors who have played Jesus discover, that saints all through history have always known, that lies hidden in plain sight within Scripture itself: Christ consciousness isn't simply about believing the right things or behaving the right way. It's about allowing yourself to become translucent to a love that was always there, waiting patiently for you to get out of the way.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

Not metaphorically.

Not aspirationally.

Actually.

Every day, I die a little more to who I thought I was.

Every day, I rise a little more into who I always was beneath the disguises.

Every day, divinity and humanity kiss.

And in that kiss— painful, beautiful, transformative—something new is born.

(PS: There were several other interview snippets that I had wished to add. Alas, the post is already quite long)

1. “Son of God” One on One Interview with Diogo Morgado

2. Robert Powell and his portrayal of Jesus

3. Jesus Christ: Playing Jesus—a Discussion with Bruce Marchiano

4. For Caviezel, playing Christ proved to be a challenge

5. 'Made Me Want to Be More Like Jesus': For Jonathan Roumie, The Chosen Season 5 Hits Deeper

6. Hot Topic: Diogo Morgado Talks Modeling and His Role in 'The Bible'

7. Jonathan Roumie's 2024 Commencement Remarks