Like many of you, I have some interesting scar stories.

• Stomach: I didn’t know how guns worked, and I was trying to extract a .22 rifle bullet from a little Saturday Night Special chamber into which I had forced it. The problem is I was trying to knock it through the other side, which caused it to fire and shred the insides of my stomach and abdomen.
• Chin: I wanted to impress some girls while roller skating, so I tried to go under a dividing bar and only missed it by the length of my face. 
• Leg: Trying to use an electric drill on a slanted piece of wood resulted in its catching my jeans and twisting them so tight it took a layer of skin off. No one told me there was a reverse button.
• Chest: An early-morning three-mile run in 25-degree weather turned into a quadruple bypass a few days later and a scar that looks like I had a zipper installed in my chest.

They make fun stories, and I can even laugh about them now. Two of the scars represent life-threatening circumstances, though, and are a significant part of my life story so far. These scars and what they represent are part of my identity, not only in physical appearance but in making me who I am. And I know I’m not the only one.

In fact, that happened to Jesus. When Thomas doubted the man he saw was really Jesus, he identified Him by His scars (John 20:25). Actually, those scars brought a confirmation of Who Jesus was when nothing else would do. That’s not really surprising, though. Isaiah prophesied that His scars would play the central part in His whole reason for coming to earth in the first place (Isaiah 53:4–5). These scars were not only prophesied before He came; they are part of a prophecy given to us that is yet to come. It seems we will recognize the Lamb on the throne in Revelation 5 by the scars we’ll see.

Consider His scars. On one hand, they represented the most painful circumstances the innocent Son of God would ever face. On the other hand, they became physical evidence of the most hopeful message man has ever known. Such pain led to such hope. Christ is our premiere example of how devastating wounds can lead to life’s most fulfilling scars.

The Hurting Church and the hurting people within that church can learn a lot from this same Jesus. God can obviously do some amazing things with scars. I’m convinced that the very physiology of scarring is a deliberate lesson from the Creator Himself. As soon as a wound happens, a scab begins to form almost immediately. The body begins to heal itself in some remarkable ways by converting a wound into a short-term scab, then long-term scar, depending on the severity of the injury. When wounds do not heal and go through the stages necessary to form a scar, it is evidence that something isn’t working properly.

Everybody gets wounded in life. Not just the physical kind. Wounds come in various shapes and sizes, such as emotional, spiritual, relational, financial, and many other forms. While some are mostly superficial, others go extremely deep. Some are visible to others on the outside, yet others are invisible because they are harbored deep inside.

Wounds even happen in churches. The pillar and ground of the truth is still made up of fragile people who get hurt. It’s not an organization immune to pain just because it is of divine origin. In a culture full of hurting people, the local church is needed to stand out as a place where wounded people go to get healed. If the church itself manifests open wounds, there will be little credibility before the community.

One truth is inarguable. God’s process turns wounds to scars. God designed our bodies so that wounds and scars are different, so why do many people treat them the same? Many walking wounded remain that way because they refuse to let God’s process of healing take place. Countless churches suffer because members don’t allow wounds to turn to scars. They keep wounds open and active; therefore, they still feel the pain.

Wounds hurt. Scars don’t. Scars are memories of wounds, but they are absent the actual pain that accompanied the original wound. Those submitting to God’s process of healing find that He has ways of eventually eliminating the pain and simply leaving a memory of His grace in its place. They don’t continue to hurt. After I had quadruple bypass surgery, the pain of trying to get out of a chair seemed unbearable at the time. This morning when I ran some intervals at a six-minute-mile pace, I was reminded of the goodness of God with not only no trace of bypass pain, but a renewed strength and energy that weren’t possible before.

While there are immeasurable, even horrendous, challenges in the lives of people everywhere, God’s handling of the wounding of His own Son qualifies Him to handle any wound that we might incur. He is more than capable of turning your wound into nothing more than a scar. Yes, you might be identified by that scar for the rest of your life, but that identification won’t be as one walking wounded. It will be as one whom the Great Physician healed in ways that work for your immeasurable good and His ultimate glory.