Finding God’s Love in Our WoundsSample

The Love of God Revealed in the Wounds of Jesus

When my wife called me out for not letting her come near the wounds on the left side of my face, I was very scared and vulnerable. She said she wanted to love all of me but since I had never allowed anyone close to those parts of me, my soul’s wounds were still tender and infected with shame, self-hatred, loneliness, and guilt. She saw that in my response and so she made me sit back and, with great tenderness, kissed the wounds on the left side of my face. My reconstructed ear, my scarred mouth, my underdeveloped jaw. She drew her lips onto every one of these places and held them there for a long time until my body and soul relaxed into her embrace and realized how much she loved me. She wanted me to know and feel that she was kissing my wounded face and that she was choosing to kiss it. No one forced her. She wanted to kiss all the wounds because they comprised the real me—the wounded, broken, vulnerable me. And she loved all of me.

When Jesus came to save us from our sins and the woundedness in our souls, it was a love so unbelievable that the only way we could trust it as true was if Jesus drew near to these wounds. But how does the perfect God draw near to our wounded souls with love? Quite simply, he does so by identifying with our deep brokenness. He takes on our wounds as his own. This is amazing! I was taught God saved us despite our wounded souls. But rather, when we see Jesus on the cross, we don’t see a God avoiding our shame. We see a God charging headlong into the most painful elements of our lives, just as Anna made me believe she loved all of me by directing her love through the worst parts of me. When Jesus takes on wounds and suffers unto death, this is God saying that he saves you not despite your woundedness but through it, because he has now embodied it as his own.