What is the purpose of scars? We may have physical scars or we may have emotional scars. Why? Why do things heal the way they do? Why the disfigurement? Why the numbness and pain? Why the ongoing hurt of a raw tear in the soul? If God made the body and soul to mend, why didn’t He make it mend back together completely and perfectly like it was before?
Answer: Because God has a purpose for scars. God has a purpose for them like He has a purpose for words and for miracles.
GOD’S PURPOSE FOR WORDS
Rom 10:14 How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?
But not all believe through words alone.
GOD’S PURPOSE FOR MIRACLES
John 4:48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.”
But not all believe through words and miracles alone.
GOD’S PURPOSE FOR SCARS
After 3 years of listening to Jesus and watching Him do miracles, Thomas still would not believe. He could not shake his own skepticism; he could not become skeptical of his own skepticism. Sin held a tight grip on him. But God loved him dearly because God loves all people, including skeptics, very much. Therefore, before time began and with divine wisdom and foresight, God made wounds heal the way they do. We may cover them up and hide them and bury the pain, but God has a divine purpose for them. When words fail to do their job, and when miracles fail to do their job, scars may be used. Scars and hurts and pain are weapons of God used against all unbelief.
Did Jesus feel numbness? Did He feel residual pain? Did He feel the tear of His soul when He remembered how His scars got on His body? Did He have flashbacks to the anguish of betrayal and all the hurt that hatred brings? Like us, would He rather have hidden His ugly marks and forget these things?
I think He would, but His love for the skeptic and the doubter and the unbeliever, along with His understanding of the purpose of scars, caused Him to set those unpleasant feelings aside, roll up His sleeves, and pointed to them. By doing this He propelled a force that goes beyond words and beyond miracles, a force that rubbed Thomas’ nose in reality.
Thomas could no longer deny Jesus’ love or the truthfulness of His message.
John 20:27 Then He said to Thomas, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.”
John 20:28 Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
Your scars are the gateway to places in the heart where all others have fallen short in their attempts to convey the love of Christ.
Rom 5:6-11 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.