The Beautiful Wounds of Jesus

Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne. – Revelation 5:6

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

Why does our exalted Lord Jesus still carry the evidence of His wounds in glory? It is because His wounds are His glories, His jewels, His sacred adornments. When believers view Jesus, they see Him as white and red, or, as the Scriptures say, “white and ruddy” (Song of Solomon 5:10 KJV): “white” due to His innocence and purity, and “ruddy,” or red, due to His blood. We see Him as the lily of matchless purity and as the crimson rose because of His blood. When we see Him on the Mount of Olives, the Mount of Transfiguration, or by the Sea of Galilee, He is beautiful; but there has never been such matchless beauty as that of our Christ as He hung upon the cross. It was there we beheld the perfection of His beauty, saw all His attributes and character fully developed, and beheld the perfect expression of His love being poured out.

Beloved Christian, the wounds of Jesus are far more beautiful to our eyes than all the splendor and pomp of kings, and His crown of thorns is far more precious than the most bejeweled imperial crown. It is true that today He wields “a measuring rod of gold” (Revelation 21:15), but there was a glory that flashed from His “measuring reed” (Ezekiel 40:3 KJV) of old that no golden scepter can ever match. Jesus continues to wear the image of a slain Lamb — the very image He wore as He wooed our souls and redeemed us by His perfect atonement. Yet these are not simply adornments, but are visible trophies of His love and His victory. He has “divide[d] the spoils with the strong” (Isaiah 53:12) and has “redeem[ed] as a people for himself ” (2 Samuel 7:23) a great multitude no one can number, and His scars are the memorials of the fight.

Oh, if Christ so loves to maintain the thoughts of His suffering on behalf of His people, how much more precious should His wounds be to us.

Behold how every wound of His
A precious balm distils,
Which heals the scars that sin had made,
And cures all mortal ills.
Those wounds are mouths that preach
His grace;
The ensigns of His love;
The seals of our expected bliss
In paradise above.

— Joseph Stennett, 1663 – 1713

From the pen of Jim Reimann:

It may also be argued that not only will Jesus bear the marks of His suffering on our behalf throughout eternity future but also that He has borne those marks since eternity past, for John described Him as “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). Yet Isaiah saw the coming Messiah as “a glorious crown [and] a beautiful wreath” (Isaiah 28:5). Thus, with His sacrifice and His beauty in mind, may these words of David be our prayer:

One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. – Psalm 27:4

Excerpted with permission from Evening by Evening: The Devotions of Charles Spurgeon by Jim Reimann, copyright Zondervan.

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