Understanding the wounds of Jesus Christ

Just a quick thought to help people understand more about Jesus. I know people like to think about the mystical sides of things, and there’s nothing wrong with that. So when I think of something that I can point out and share in this regard, I do so.

When people die and go to heaven (obviously I’m talking about the good folks here, and not the other place), it is their souls that go to heaven. The body will not resurrect until God chooses a time to establish the next worldly kingdom after the Final Judgment. So people’s souls go to heaven, yet while they have no bodies they can still “see” each other and recognize people. Remember, the soul is the resident of the body and is shaped by its experiences in the body temple. So people are “recognizable” in heaven by “looking” at each other and perceiving a bodily form and image. We know this from the Biblical witnesses, most notably St. John in the Book of Revelation.

We also know that only that which has been purified can enter heaven, and that as Jesus assured everybody, there are no tears or mourning in heaven. So one can safely surmise that the blind will see, the crippled will be made whole, and that all wounds are healed. Therefore, one’s soul in its reflection of the body’s form will not bear the images of hurts, disabilities or other physical or mental wounds. If someone had a lost limb, for example, their soul image In heaven would show that limb restored, and everyone appears in wholeness.

There is one exception, actually, and that is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ continues in heaven to bear the wounds in his hands, feet and his side. That is the meaning of St. John observing in the Book of Revelation that he saw “a Lamb that seemed to have been slain” (Revelation 5:6). However Jesus Christ appears at any given time in heaven, whether in his ascended body or in the form of the Lamb, the wounds are still contained on his perceived body. This is because Jesus Christ is eternally the incarnation of the truth, the Word made flesh. Jesus Christ was not a human soul that is sent into a human body in the normal means of a human being born, in order to have their eternal soul shaped by their life experience. While Jesus Christ was human, he was also born of the Holy Spirit, which is the permanent record of enduring truth. The wounds that humans experience in life, or their bodily or mental disabilities, are not enduring truth, therefore they disappear in heaven. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ, however, is an enduring truth, and therefore is eternally represented by his holy wounds in heaven. This is why the disciples were able to see and touch his wounds in his glorified body after the Resurrection. The truth of the situation is that the truth itself bore wounds. So the wounds are perfected truth. Therefore even the perfected and glorified resurrected body of Jesus Christ continues to have perceivable the marks of the wounds. It has nothing to do with healing or any other human concept. It means that as Jesus Christ was the embodiment of the truth, his perceived image on earth and in heaven will continue to always bear the signs of truth on the truth. Jesus Christ, through the constancy of the Holy Spirit, is the embodiment of truth for all eternity and so those are not wounds in the sense that they are shed away with the body as humans do when they die. The fullness of truth always accompanies Jesus Christ because he is born of and part of the eternal truth of God.

Oh, one other explanation. It is the wounds on his hands, feet and side that are preserved to be perceived, but not of his scourging and crown of thorns, because the nail and lance wounds were the ones Biblically prophesied. Therefore the wounds that came from his torture and abuse were “shed” like any other human who ascends to heaven, but the Biblical prophesied wounds remain, since that is the manifestation of the prophesied truth of the Lord God.

I hope you find this helpful.