Christ's personality

What a man! What a maker of men! What a master of men and of events! What a sovereignty was the mien of his self-consciousness! Lord of himself and all besides; with an irresistible power to force, and even hurry, events on a world scale; and yet with the soul that sat among children, and the heart in which children sat. He had an intense reverence for a past that was yet too small for him. It rent him to rend it; and yet he had to break it up, to the breaking of his own heart, in the greatest revolution the world ever saw. He was an austere man, a severe critic, a born fighter, of choleric wrath and fiery scorn, so that the people thought he was Elijah or the Baptist; yet he was gentle to the last degree, especially with those ignorant and out of the way. In the thick of life and love he yet stood detached, sympathetic yet aloof, cleaving at once both to men and to solitude. He spoke with such power because he loved silence. With an almost sacramental idea of human relations, especially the central relation of marriage, he yet avoided for himself every bond of property, vocation, or family; and he cut these bonds when they stood between men and himself. Full of biting irony upon men he yet was their healer and Saviour. Of a quick understanding which tore through the pedantry of the Scribes, with a sure dialectic which never failed him, and never left him at the mercy of his hecklers, he had yet a naive nature and a pictorial speech which brought him very near to the simplest - whom next moment some deep paradox would confound, and even wound. Clear, calm, determined, and sure of his mark, he was next hour roused to such impulsive passion as if he were beside himself. But if he let himself go he always knew where he was going. With a royal, and almost proud, sense of himself, he poured out his sould unto God and unto death, and was the friend of publicans and sinners. With a superhuman sense of authority he had superhuman humility.

[...]

He was all that, in a unity greater than the unity of the most uncommon men, a unity ruled by his tremendous will.

(pp. 64-66, PT Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ)

Yet, as Hunter comments, 'great as Christ's personality was, the real site of his greatness lies in what he did, in the cross' (pp. 70-71, PT Forsyth).