The Scars He Kept

"Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here, and see my hands." (John 20:27)

The risen Christ kept his scars. He did not have to. He had a new body; he could walk through a locked door with it, appear and disappear, every rule of matter suspended for him. He could have come out of that tomb without a mark on him. He chose to keep the holes. And when he wanted to prove who he was to a man who would not believe, he did not perform a fresh miracle. He showed him the wounds.

That is the whole thing in one gesture. The wounds were not erased in the resurrection. They were glorified. They came through. They are, apparently, part of who he is now and will be forever, and the last vision Scripture gives us of him is a Lamb standing as though it had been slain. The marks did not disqualify him from glory. They became his glory.

Which means the marks that love has left on you are not damage to be repaired and hidden. Borne in him, they are becoming your face, the truest thing about who you are turning into. That is either a terror or a hope, and which one it is depends entirely on what put them there. Scars from your sin are one thing. Scars from loving as he loved are another, and those he does not intend to erase. He intends to raise them. So stop despising the places love has cut you. Ask instead that they be scars like his, and let him carry them into glory the way he carried his own.