Our Wounded God

This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. (Acts 1:11)

And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain… (Rev. 5:6)

If Christ rose from the dead, then he also ascended into heaven. It is the point of the first chapter of Acts to connect the two realities, of Christ’s vicarious suffering for us on the cross and his resurrection from the dead to his ascension into heaven and his advocacy for us there. There is a reason it does this. We must connect the two: the earthly Christ with the heavenly Christ.

It is not that Christ simply disappeared from the pages of history and mysteriously appeared in heaven. Rather the body that was crucified rose from the grave, and the resurrected Christ ascended into heaven. So the Christ who was here is also the Christ who is there, and the Christ who is there in heaven is also the Christ who was here on earth.

You may not have made the connection yourself or even thought much about it. You my have maintained a bit of a naïve view of these matters, that his appearance in heaven was magic-like — ceasing to be on earth and appearing in heaven. Certainly our own deaths are like this, for our bodies remain on this earth after death. But with Christ it was not so. The body that was raised from the grave was taken up into heaven.

Now it was a glorious body, raised from the dead. It was raised in power and in glory, an incorruptible body, one not given to decay, one not susceptible to disease and the ravages of age. It was a spiritual body, as we are told in 1 Corinthians 15. But, nevertheless, it was a body, and in that body were still the unmistakable signs of his suffering for us. The marks of the nails were in his hands and feet, and the piercing of his side was still visible — as the resurrection appearances tell us.

These were the marks or the wounds of love. If we would understand love we would know that love not only produces joy but it also is a summons to suffering. Love bears its own marks. Compassion and charity call us to endure hardships and to carry burdens for the ones we love. Love that is marked by selfishness is not love at all. Love that says, “I love you because you make me feel good,” is not true love. True love is tested not by the thrills of excitement and “you-make-me-feel-good.” True love is proved by endurance, patience, suffering, and the wounds we bear for another.

The descriptions of Christ in heaven show that he will retain in his glorious resurrected body the testimony and the marks and the wounds of his sufferings for us. In the heavenly vision of The Revelation, John is transported into the throne room of heaven. At first he sees the throne and that one is seated there, but at first he sees him only as one who “had the appearance of jasper and carnelian” (Rev. 4:3). No characteristics emerged from that first sight that we can associate to a personality, rather stone-like or jewel-like is the appearance. Then as he remained he looked again on the throne and now a personality emerges — a Lamb, one that appears to have been slain, is standing in the throne.

G. Campbell Morgan, in his classic book, The Crises of the Christ, called him “Man’s Wounded God.” But he points out the benefit to our souls in knowing Christ in light of his sufferings for us and in light of his overcoming them.

It is impossible to pass from this contemplation of the ascension of Jesus to the centre of all government, and to see in Him man’s wounded God, without becoming conscious of a great comfort and of a great strength. The comfort ever comes as we behold on the throne of the Eternal One Who bears amid the dazzling splendor, marks that tell of His having suffered and died for us men, that He might bring us into union with His unending joy and eternal Love.

Moreover when the work presses, and the battle thickens, and the day seems long in coming, it is good for the heart to remember that the present conflict is with defeated foes, and that there is no room for question as to the final issue, for the Man of Nazareth is not only seated in the place of authority, He carries forward the work of active administration … High over all the thrones of earth, stands that throne of the Eternal, and seated on its is the ascended Man, watching, ordering, preventing, and through all the apparent chaos, moving surely towards the ultimate triumph of the Infinite Love.

(G. Campbell Morgan, The Crises of the Christ, p. 404)