Not who you think it is

"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not." Isaiah 53:3

When I think of The Lord of the Rings and notice a Christ figure, who do I imagine?

Not Gandalf, who can come to mind so easily because of his fall at Moria and his transition from Gandalf the Gray to Gandalf the White.

Not Frodo, who sacrifices so much in order to dispose of the One Ring, which is Sin in this view.

The One Ring is sin, yes, but of the many characters who so imperfectly represent Christ there is another that comes more prominently to mind: Gollum.

Certainly "there is no beauty that we should desire him," but it goes a little past that. When it comes down to it, Frodo cannot do the deed. He stands at the edge of the Crack of Doom, having traveled so far to rid himself (and the world) of sin, but at the last he cannot do it. There are sins of ours that we are disgusted by, but there are yet others that are, ah, precious to us. Pet sins, so to say. When I am angry, for example, it is not rare for me to like that feeling, to have to step outside of myself and give a reminder that yes, it may feel good to be angry at someone, but it still isn't right.

We don't have to worry much about sins that we don't like. The ones that we're warned of all of the time are the sins that we enjoy, and because we enjoy them it is so hard for us to get rid of them. And sometimes even if we hate that particular sin it is still difficult to be rid of it. I am sure that many recovering addicts will agree with me on this. Ultimately we cannot get rid of everything on our own.

Luckily for us, and for Middle-Earth, Gollum-Jesus is available. Yes, it is painful for Frodo-Everyman when his finger is bitten off, but is this pain not infinitely less than the alternative that would have come? Frodo has lost the Ring through the action of his intercessor, that painful benefactor that led him to this place to start with, and he can return to his home at last.

As a final note, Frodo could not have stood at Mount Doom without traveling through Mordor (with eagles or without them, still would have had to cross the territory). Without the Atonement of Christ we cannot be rid of sin, but even with it we cannot only say "Jesus is awesome" and then sit on the couch. As C. S. Lewis says we cannot call ourselves Christians if we fail to take "the slightest slightest notice of what he [Jesus] says," and what He says is "Come, follow me" and "Come unto me." If He has traveled through Mordor and stands at Mount Doom, then, we cannot stand at the Shire and think ourselves about to dispose of the One Ring forever.