The Scars of Jesus

Physical scars appear where painful wounds have been inflicted. As humans, we can suffer different kinds of physical wounds:

Concussions – from violent, external trauma or severe internal pressure

Lacerations – from cutting or tearing our flesh

Penetrations – from penetrating our skin with sharp, pointed objects.

Perforations – from opening our skin with blunt, external pressure.

Incisions – from cutting or slicing our skin and other tissue with a sharp blade.

When wounds like these occur, they are painful, destructive, and often deadly. If and when they heal, they leave behind scars as a visible reminder of our painful experiences. As human beings, we do whatever we can to avoid physical wounds and we view scars as a blemish rather than a blessing.

When we speak about scars, also have difficult experiences and uncomfortable consequences come to mind which were the result of an accident or some wrong choices we have made. Do you have any scars like this?

When Christ suffered and died for us, he suffered the full range of physical wounds:

Concussion – he was struck forcefully by people’s hands (John 18:22; 19:3).

Laceration – he was whipped by a leather, glass, and steel whip (John 19:1).

Penetration – he was pierced by a crown of thorns (John 19:2).

Perforation – he was punctured by blunt nails in his ankles and wrists (John 19:8).

Incision – he was stabbed by a long spear (John 19:34).

Unlike many of the wounds we suffer and scars we bear, though, his wounds were neither an accident nor the result of Christ’s wrong choices. They were more like the noble wounds of childbirth or a soldier defending his nation’s freedom in battle by his own freewill and proactive choices. Christ’s wounds were excruciating and ultimately lethal, but they are very meaningful for us.

What’s especially fascinating about the wounds Christ suffered for us is that scars from his suffering remained after his resurrection. We may view this as a blemish or detriment, but we should view them as a positive source of encouragement instead. Christ’s scars are the unmistakable evidence of his real and successful suffering for our sins and his victorious resurrection from the grave! They provide us with indelible proof that he suffered and died for us and that he did so victoriously.

Let’s consider Christ’s wounds and the scars they left behind from three perspectives.

Christ’s wounds seemed disastrous at first.

As Christ prepared to go to Jerusalem for his final Passover, he told his closest followers what would happen to him there. We would experience great suffering and be killed.

“He took the twelve aside and said to them, ‘Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. They will scourge Him and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again’” (Luke 18:31-33).

The disciples didn’t understand what he meant, so they tuned it out (Luke 18:34). Yet as the reality of what Christ said sunk in, Peter urged Christ change his plans. “Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!’” (Matt 16:22).

Have you ever said ‘no’ to God’s plan because it seemed to contradict or set back the plans you envisioned for your future?

The twelve disciples believed Christ would rise to power as a king over Israel and overthrow the Gentile nations, placing Israel in power over the world. They also believed he would give them powerful positions in his government. They had left their businesses and jobs to follow him, so their reputations rested entirely on his success!

For Christ to be arrested, tortured, and executed would spell disaster for their plans. This turn would ruin any plans for ruling over other nations, but it would also humiliate the twelve disciples who had followed him, and it would place them at risk of a similar fate. It would not only spoil their plans but would spoil their reputations as well. If Christ had been arrested and executed, then what would happen to the men he had trained and who had so closely associated with him?

When Christ was arrested and his suffering began, how did these men respond? “All the disciples forsook Him and fled” (Matt 26:56).

This reminds us of how Isaiah said, “He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him” (Isa 53:3).

Even today, the message of Christ’s suffering is hard to accept. “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing” (1 Cor 1:18).

But it’s not just unbelievers who looked down on Christ’s suffering and were turned back by it – his closest followers also turned away because his suffering would bring difficulty and suffering for them.

Perhaps the closest, similar scenario we can imagine today is supporting an opposition candidate financially, publicly, and vocally during an election in a totalitarian nation. How would you feel if that candidate lost by a landslide was executed afterwards? That’s how Christ’s closest disciples must have felt.

How would you have responded to Christ’s suffering and death if you had been one of his closest, most loyal followers?

Sometimes God brings us to a crossroads in life and it feels like he is leading us in the wrong direction. We have a plan for our future that we believe Christ will help us achieve, but as we follow him, he leads us into circumstances that feel more like setbacks than solutions, like failures than success. Like Peter, we say, “Not so Lord! We have a much better plan! This is too painful, too difficult, too risky!”

Are you facing any such circumstances that feel like setbacks as you follow Christ? You’ve made careful, biblically based, even prayerful decisions yet things have gotten harder not easier.

If you spend your life trying to hold everything together, then don't be surprised when you lose it in the end. But if you let go of your life to follow Christ wherever he leads you, he personally guarantees a result you'll never regret – even though he may lead you through times of difficult suffering.

Christ’s scars show that his suffering brought deliverance.

Though Christ’s wounds were discouraging and humiliating for his closest friends and difficult to accept at first, they became the evidence of our deliverance from death and the solution to our problem of sin, which we truly needed. Far more than deliverance from political oppression and physical challenges, we need deliverance from our sins.

The excruciating treatment Christ endured was due to no wrongdoing on his part. He had never sinned nor done anything deserving discipline or punishment. Yet he suffered the most brutal wounds and the most horrific kind of death suitable only for a heinous criminal.

This happened because “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us” (Gal 3:13). He literally rescued us “out from under” God’s falling judgment for our sins to receive God’s judgment “for us” (lit. “in our place”). In Christ’s wounds we see God’s judgment of our very own sins on him instead.

“He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:5-6).

According to Peter, Christ literally and willingly accepted our guilt onto himself so that he could die in our place and offer us eternal life instead. He exchanged our guilt and judgment for his righteousness and freedom.

“Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed” (1 Pet 2:24).

When a person survives severe physical wounds, those wounds forms scars as permanent, visible reminders of the suffering they experienced and are evidence that those wounds have healed. Yet, both Isaiah and Peter say that Christ’s wounds not only healed, but they healed us, too, because they were experienced for us! Christ’s wounds are the evidence that we’ve been healed from the problem and consequences of our sins – for those who have placed their complete trust in him as God and Savior.

According to Isa 64:6, “We are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.” Here Isaiah claims that our sin is such a severe problem that even when we try to do right, our “good” behavior is nothing but a blood-stained, filthy rag that’s been placed on top of a gaping wound. Our sin is like a gaping wound that contaminates our good behavior, but the wounds Christ suffered in our place healed these wounds for us.

What’s special about Christ’s scars is that they stayed on his body after his resurrection. We might assume that his restored, resurrected body would remove this shameful evidence of our sins and reminder of his suffering, but he retained those scars at least on Earth and perhaps forever.

“‘Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.’” When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet” (Luke 24:39-40).

“He said to Thomas, ‘Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing’” (John 20:27).

His scars give evidence of not only healing our sins but conquering death too, for they are proof us his resurrection. His scars are not a defect but a glorious reminder. They are like the scars of childbirth or a soldier’s victorious battle, but on a far greater scale.

Have you accepted Christ’s death and resurrection as the solution for your sins and believed on him alone as your God and Savior? Are you relying on your own good behavior and religious efforts to atone for your sins and earn favor with God? Or have you stopped doing that and turned to Christ alone – in his suffering, death, and resurrection – to heal you from your sins?

Christ’s scars inspire us to persevere through our own suffering.

We’ve considered how remarkable it is that Christ retained the scars of his suffering for us on his resurrected body, but we should also observe another stunning reality – that he presents the evidence of his suffering in the future as well.

In John’s vision of God’s future judgment of the world, he opens with a special appearance of Christ: “I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain” (Rev 5:6).

Rather than present himself as an imposing king or powerful warrior, he presents himself as a helpless lamb, and not just any lamb, but one who had been slain. The word slain portrays not just any death, but a violent, bloody, torturous one. John could tell from how Christ presented himself in this vision that he had been slain. His wounds were visible.

John wrote Revelation to encourage Christ’s followers to persevere through suffering as they follow him. When we consider Christ, we know he not only suffered for our sins, but he empathizes with our suffering.

When we suffer consequences for our sins, he empathizes with us and feels our pain. But when we suffer – as he did – because of the sinfulness of others, esp. their rejection of Christ, he identifies with that pain as well. And both difficulties are an inescapable part of the human experience.

Sometimes (many times) we ask the question (or want to ask the question), why does God let us suffer? The profoundness of this question shrinks significantly, though, when we realize that God himself suffered for us, with us, and more than any of us ever will.

Though some of us will suffer more than others – at least in the way we measure suffering – the simple truth is that to follow Christ will lead to some suffering. The setbacks or U-turns I mentioned earlier will come.

There will be painful, short-term losses that yield fruitful, long-term gains for God. When we suffer as followers of Christ, he suffers with us, and we follow his good example.

Amy Carmichael was born in Ireland (1867), the oldest of seven children in the second half of the 1800s. In her teenage years, she believed on Christ as Savior not long before her father died, leaving her mother and family with severe financial hardships.

In her late 20’s, she ministered to factory girls in Belfast.

A few years later, she moved away from her family to recover from physical illness.

In 1893, she moved to Japan to do gospel ministry there, then she relocated to India a year later because she was told it would be better for her weak health.

She went through the difficult work of learning the language and doing gospel ministry, but eventually settled on opening a small home to rescue girls from temple prostitution.

Her ministry faced many ups and downs, including when young babies died in her care, leaving her feeling very guilty.

She eventually opened a recovery home for boys as well, and her extended “family” of rescued children whom she also introduced to Christ, expanded beyond 900.

Throughout all these experiences, Amy suffered from weak health.

She spent 50+ yrs. in India, never married, and devoted herself to her work for God.

At 64 yrs., she broke her leg and damaged her spine in a fall, leaving her bed-ridden for the final 20 yrs. of life, during which time she did a lot of administrating and writing.

One of her poems she wrote is entitled Hast Thou No Scar?

Hast thou no scar?

No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?

I hear thee sung as mighty in the land;

I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star.

Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?

Yet I was wounded by the archers; spent,

Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent

By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned.

Hast thou no wound?

No wound? No scar?

Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,

And piercèd are the feet that follow Me.

But thine are whole; can he have followed far

Who hast no wound or scar?

Christ’s scars inspire us to persevere through our own suffering for him. Peter himself (who had urged Christ not to suffer) said, “For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps” (1 Pet 2:21).

Later in the same letter to fellow believers, he said, “Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy” (1 Pet 4:13-14).

These are remarkable words because they come from the very man who urged Christ to resist his suffering and death and who literally fought against it with a sword. Yet how did Peter and Christ’s other close followers fare when they followed Christ? It seems that:

Peter was crucified upside down.

Andrew was tied to an X-shaped cross.

James was beheaded.

John was banished to Patmos Island (likely working in the mines as an elderly man).

Philip was either hung or stoned in Turkey.

Nathanael was either crucified or tied to a rack and thrown into the sea.

Matthew was martyred somehow in Ethiopia, perhaps by being burned at the stake.

Thomas was killed by a spear in India.

James the Less was possibly crucified then sawn in pieces in Egypt.

Bartholomew was killed either with arrows or being clubbed to death in Persia.

Simon was also possibly crucified.

Though some of these instances are obscure, history does strongly indicate that all these men died a martyr’s death, except John who died a natural death but still suffered greatly.

Are you – like Christ’s first followers and many Christians of the first century – motivated to suffer for Christ because he has suffered for you?

As one song writer has observed, "What if the trials of this life are God's mercies in disguise?" May the scars of Christ, the perpetual reminder of his suffering for us, inspire us to persevere through our suffering for him at any cost. Today Christ remains scarred for you. Have you no scar for him?