How do you depict the life of Jesus in under three hours and still convey to millions of viewers His eternal existence, virgin birth, ministry, miracles, death, resurrection, and ascension?

Son of God accomplishes just that in 2 hours 18 minutes.

The 1977 miniseries Jesus of Nazareth, considered by many to be the greatest cinematic depiction of the story of Jesus, was more than six hours long.[1] But, modern, twenty-first-century adults with underdeveloped attention spans are not going to sit in a theater for even half that time to watch a story they already know.

Beginning with the opening scene of the Apostle John on the Isle of Patmos, producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey leave no question where they stand on the issue of Biblical creation. John opens up with John 1:1, going further to explain The Word was there when God created Adam and Eve, when Eve ate the forbidden fruit, when God destroyed the world and spared Noah, when He chose Abraham, when Moses led His people out of Egypt, and was there when David slew Goliath. The establishment of Christ’s divinity and eternity from the very start is essential since so much of the rest of the movie focuses so deeply on His humanity.

The life of Jesus is really too much material to cover in one feature-length film and because of this, it can seem a little boring at times.

Son of God flies but drags by at the same time as selected scenes of Jesus’ ministry are presented piecemeal in anticipation of the crucifixion.

On the musical front, Hans Zimmer does not disappoint, and any lull in the action is quickly compensated for by the superb soundtrack that makes this by far the best musical accompaniment of all time to a movie on the life of Jesus.

The special effects were only decent. The digital reconstruction of Solomon’s Temple was good for The History Channel’s “Bible” series but leaves the technologically spoiled movie brat a little unimpressed when viewing it on the big screen.

The movie did have its moments, though, such as the way Jesus handles the Pharisee when he heals the lame man let through the roof. After being accused of blasphemy for forgiving the man’s sins, He gives the Pharisee the message of “oh, you don’t like me forgiving his sins, do you? Why don’t I heal him while I’m at it?”

The scene when Jesus calls Matthew, the tax-collector to be his follower is particularly moving. It opens with a file of Jewish tax-collectors’ cheating their own people and the same Pharisee’s expressing his disgust for the Jewish traitors. Jesus then steps in and relates the parable of the self-righteous Pharisee and publican at prayer. Matthew rises under grave conviction and just as Jesus arrives at the part when the publican prays; with tears streaming down both cheeks, Matthew finishes the rest: “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

The Garden of Gethsemane scene is also quite creative as it cuts from Jesus’s praying in the garden, to Caiaphas’s praying in the Temple, to Pilate and his wife’s praying to their gods in the palace.

Ironically, the best acting is performed by those portraying the antagonists, but for this, a good bit of credit can be given to the screenwriting. The bald Fraser Ayres’s portrayal of Barabas, giving the aura of a thuggish, nationalist skinhead is a stroke of genius. Adrian Schiller as Caiaphas gives the impression of an evil, corrupt ruler who is out to silence the “peasant,” who’s “stirring things up.”

The casting of Diogo Morgado as Jesus caused many to complain about Morgado’s not being a Jew. But, it is simply not reasonable to expect directors to find actors of the same ethnicity for every role they cast. Moreover, Morgado was not the only ethnic discrepancy. Black African actors portrayed both the man who bore Jesus’s cross and one of the wise men from the East. Simon of Cyrene was most likely a Jew who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, and the wise men from the east were probably Medes and Persians, present-day Kurds and Iranians.[2]

Morgado successfully conveys many of the characteristics of Jesus, such as compassion, love, and gentleness; but to such an extent that it takes away from Jesus’s authority, which the Bible says He spoke with when He taught. This especially affects the scene when Jesus overturns the money changers’ tables – probably the most pathetic scene of the entire movie. Jesus is portrayed heartbroken as he effortlessly turns over a few tables and weakly confronts the Pharisees before walking out of the Temple with His disciples. This plays into the hands of false teachers who claim Jesus was nothing more than a Jewish reformer who, disgusted with the corruption of the synagogues and Judaism of His day, broke away with His followers and formed another sect of the Jewish religion.

This is in stark contrast to what actually happened. Both Matthew and Mark record Jesus’s running the money changers out of the Temple, and Mark tells us He “would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.” Whether He personally, physically threw them out and barred them from reentering, did so with the help of His disciples, or the money changers feared His thousands of followers is not given to us in Scripture and would certainly have been interesting to see played out in a director’s imagination. But a scene like that wouldn’t fit in too well with the nice-guy image of Jesus that the movie seeks to portray.

The lack of chronological accuracy is immediately observable to any viewer who has read the Gospels.

This included a couple of old ladies who were sitting in front of me in the theater, who during the duration of the film felt it would not be complete if they didn’t comment to one another during every scene on the inaccuracies of that particular sequence’s portrayal.

For starters, Simon Peter is alone when Jesus multiplies the fish in Peter’s boat and when he calls him to be His disciple. Whereas in the Bible, (Mt. 4:18-20, Mark 1:16-18) Peter and his brother Andrew were together when Jesus called them. But assuming the film is basing the choosing of Peter off Luke’s depiction, in which Andrew is not mentioned (Luke 5:1-11), James and John are notably absent, and the movie makes it look as if Jesus was a complete stranger to Peter. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus had already healed Simon’s mother-in-law in the previous chapter and was in Simon’s boat to begin with because He had been preaching from it.

Another example of shoddy chronology is when Jesus reads from Isaiah and tells those in the synagogue: “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” This scene appears toward the middle of the film, whereas in Luke, it happened before the miracle in Peter’s boat.

But it doesn’t end there. As Jesus and His disciples are being chased away from the synagogue, one of the Pharisees tells Jesus of John the Baptist’s death and warns that if He doesn’t watch it, he’ll be next. Since King Herod is completely removed from the movie, including during Jesus’ trial, they apparently had to come up with some way to explain John’s death. But making it look as if the Pharisees killed John is plainly irresponsible.

But it gets even more bizarre.

Jesus acts shocked and goes and sits sorrowfully under a tree with His disciples and then tells them “John was the greatest teacher I ever knew.” Presumably, this is supposed to be an offshot of Luke 7:24-28, which Jesus said about John while he was still alive.[3]

The movie is strewn with numerous little inaccuracies like these that make anyone with minimal Biblical knowledge cringe.

But before writing Son of God off as another Last Temptation of Christ or Jesus Christ Superstar, Christians should remember why the film was made to begin with and whom it was made for. Burnett and Downey admit the entire movie does not follow the Gospels accurately.  Burnett clarified that they’re not pastors and are not qualified to teach but are qualified to “make an emotional connection.” Like Jesus’s parables, Burnett said: “this film needs to stand alone so that those who had not read the gospels would be compelled to seek more.”[4]

All too often, movie-goers expect a two-hour movie based on a book that took them ten hours to read to accurately depict every sequence of the story exactly how they imagined it while reading. They then walk away from the cinema disappointed that the producers and director don’t have the same imagination they do. This is only amplified for Bible-based movies because unlike The Lord of the Rings or The Hunger Games, the events in the Bible not only happened, they deal with and were inspired by the Creator of the universe.

But, Son of God isn’t the Gospels on film. It’s an emotional tool intended to draw people to Christ. For instance, if a lost sinner understands the gospel message in church and becomes a follower of Christ, it’s of little consequence whether the preacher mentioned in his sermon that Pilate sent Jesus to Herod before having Him crucified.

Son of God is not another Passion of the Christ. It has neither the budget nor the renowned director and suffers from having to cram the entire Biblical story into one movie. But as an emotional tool to depict what Christ did for us, encourage believers to live as Christians, and urge non-believers to be learn more, the film succeeds.

While there are many chronological flaws and a few rings of false doctrine, such as Joseph and Mary’s acting surprised when the wise men bow down and worship Jesus, the basic message that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” and that He “is the Way, the Truth, and the Life” is amplified from the opening scene of St. John on the Isle of Patmos, to Jesus’s reappearing to Him on that same Isle after John has related Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection to the viewer.

This is definitely a movie that Christians should do their best to convince their unbelieving friends to see. Their friends will most likely walk away unconvinced and seemingly unmoved. Jesus was just a cool hippie, they’ll say, who was murdered by a bunch of religious zealots and Roman tyrants. But like Pilate’s memorable line in the film “He’ll be forgotten in a week” rings so untrue today, so too an unbeliever is not likely to be as uninterested in Jesus a week after viewing Son of God as he or she was a week before seeing it.