I have always found it immeasurably comforting that Jesus gave Simon the name “Cephas,” or Peter, before Cephas had done much of anything. Before Peter had even determined to follow Jesus, let alone serve him or love him as the Christ, before Peter had muttered his denials of knowing Jesus or had one of his moments of blurted insight, before Jesus had reason to call Peter “Satan,” Jesus called him the “Rock.”(1)

What does this say? First, it says a great deal about who Jesus is. He is willing to vouch for us. Before you even know what you stand for, he is willing to stand up for you. And second, it reminds us that we are more than the sum of our blunders and failings, as well as our victories and our bright spots. As the apostle Paul wrote to the Romans: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Before we had a chance to prove ourselves, before we had a chance to fall on our faces or say something fairly smart, Christ knew that he would die to show us the reach of his love. And he did.

Still, Peter is the disciple that makes many of us feel okay about ourselves. He is a loud statement to the hopeless, to the skeptic, to the guilt-ridden that God can take our doubt, our regret, the hopelessness of our past or our present, and create something solid by giving us the Son. In Peter we find that pains of regret and faithlessness may leave a permanent mark, but that even scars can be reminders of the living hope we profess. Or as Peter calls it, “the Word that will not wither.”(2)

Even so, when we look at our own moments of faithlessness or foolishness, those marks of humiliation, the bitter sting of missed and lost opportunities, it is hard to see much beyond regret and remorse, even if we were once told that Jesus had forgiven us. Can there be more to see in the weight of our past, the glimpses of guilty motives, disappointments, and poor behavior? The testimony of Peter himself is that yes, very definitely, there is.

Peter’s passion for Christ was no doubt shaped by the pain and humiliation of denying him. “If we are faithless, God remains faithful, for God cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). Scars indeed have a way of reminding us that we are alive, participating in this fragile thing called life. Some of my own remind me that I am not an island, that I need people, that I desperately need a savior, that I need God in all that I face. Still others remind me that I am healed or being healed. But even Peter’s most indelible marks were nothing beside the mark of the risen Christ upon his life.

When Jesus appeared to the gathered, frightened disciples after the horror of the cross, he said to them, “See my hands and my feet, that it is me. Touch me and see” (Luke 24:39). The disciples had gathered together to discuss the rumors some had heard that Christ was alive and out of the grave, risen from the cruel death they had witnessed just days earlier. They were disoriented and afraid, and Jesus told them to look at his hands and feet, which had been pierced. And to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side.”(3) To his closest friends, Jesus said, “Look at my scars, see that it is me. Recognize me by my scars; they will point you to God.”

Far beyond any scar we might bear, the wounds of Christ point us to one who touches our disfigured world with his own humanity. He was crushed for our iniquities. By his stripes we are healed. No doubt, it was this piercing reality of Jesus bearing the scars of human failure, carrying our pain, and taking our shame, that Peter bore in mind as he dynamically instructed any who would listen: “Throw all your anxieties upon him, because he cares about you!”(4) For Peter, of all people, knew this well.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) John 1:42.

(2) See 1 Peter 24-25.

(3) John 20:27.

(4) 1 Peter 5:7.

Why Won’t God Heal Amputees? is a popular website and one-time viral YouTube video. The basic premise of the content is that God doesn’t answer prayer since God has never healed an amputee, and by extension doesn’t heal every person of every infirmity. God, therefore, does not really exist.
While there are obvious false assumptions made about God, prayer, and healing (how does one know that in the whole world God has not healed an amputee, for starters) many who do pray for healing often fail to experience it in the way they expect. Healing rarely parallels a conventional or traditional sense of that word. Loved ones die of cancer, friends are killed in car accidents, economic catastrophe befalls even the most frugal, and people in much of the developing world die from diseases long cured in the West. Beyond the realm of physical healing, many experience emotional and psychological trauma that leave open and festering wounds. Or, there are those perpetual personality ticks and quirks that seem beyond the reach of the supernatural. Given all of this contrary experience, what does it mean to receive healing, and should one hold out hope that healing can come in this world? Specifically, for those who pray, and for those who believe that God does heal, how might the persistence of wounds—psychological, emotional and physical—be understood?
In a recent New York Times article, Marcia Mount Shoop writes of her horrific rape as a fifteen year-old girl.(1) A descendant of three generations of ministers, she ran to the safest place she knew—the church. Yet as she stood amid the congregants singing hymns and reciting creeds, she felt no relief. Even her favorite verse from Romans—”And we know that in all things God works for good with those who love him”—sounded hollow and brought little comfort. How could she ever be healed of this horrific act of violence perpetrated against her will?
Once at home, alone with the secret of her rape, Marcia Shoop found something that enabled her to survive. “I felt Jesus so close,” she recalled in an interview. “It wasn’t the same Jesus I experienced at church. It was this tiny, audible whisper that said, ‘I know what happened. I understand.’ And it kept me alive, that frayed little thread.” (2)
The hope that Jesus was physically close to her in her pain led Ms. Shoop to become a minister herself more than a quarter century after her horrific rape. It also led her to more deeply connect her body with her soul and mind. This reconnection of the body with soul and with mind is where she experienced what she would call “healing.” God was with her in the living, breathing, physical reality of Jesus who likewise continued to bear the wounds of his own crucifixion and torture after the gospel writers testify to him having been raised from the dead.
The Gospel of John records the risen Jesus as inviting Thomas to “reach your finger and see my hands; and reach your hand, and put it into my side.”(3) Jesus was not a disembodied spirit without flesh and blood as a result of his resurrection from the dead. He was a body, and a body that was wounded. Even the resurrection did not take away his bodily scars! This reality can bring great hope to those who follow Jesus and to those who wonder about how they might find healing at all. For healing did not equate a lack of wounding, or physical perfection—being untouched by the sorrow and suffering of a world gone horribly wrong—even for Jesus.
For Ms. Shoop, healing didn’t mean the total erasure of the pain and horror of her rape, as difficult as it was to bear that wound. But it meant that she encountered the wounded God in the person of Jesus who continued to bear the scars and wounds of his crucifixion. As she recalled, “What happened to me wasn’t “for the good,” referring again to her favorite passage in Romans. But God took the garbage, the stench [of that horrible event] and gently, tenderly, indignantly wove it into this moment of redemption. What a gift.”(4)
Healing is not a gift that comes instantly, nor does it always look like what we expect. It is often a slow, painful journey through the void and desolation of suffering. It will not erase our wounds. Yet, the promise of resurrection, of new life that comes even with wounded hands and sides, offers another picture of healing where being an ‘amputee’ might be honored and redeemed.
Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.
(1) Samuel G. Freedman, “A Rape Survivor Now Ministers Body and Soul,” The New York Times Online, June 29, 2012, accessed June 29, 2012.
(2) Ibid.
(3) John 20:27.
(4) Samuel G. Freedman, “A Rape Survivor Now Ministers Body and Soul,” The New York Times Online, June 29, 2012, accessed June 29, 2012.