John 20:27-28, “[Jesus] said to Thomas…’see my hands; and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’”
Sometimes we read this passage and think that Jesus presents His wounds to Thomas as proof that He really has been raised from the dead. While that is certainly an element of this moment, it is by no means the central idea.
Rather, the point in Jesus’s emphasis on the wounds of His crucifixion is to show that the Lord who stands now in risen glory is none other than the Crucified One. It’s not as though Jesus *was* crucified but now He is resurrected so we ought to forget about that unfortunate episode and focus on His risen splendor…NO, the splendor of the risen Christ is precisely the fact that He IS—now and for all eternity—the Crucified One, who is alive forevermore (Rev.1:18, 5:6).
We might think of the risen Jesus as the “frame” in which the portrait of the crucified Jesus—which is the portrait of the glory of God the Father—is forever set on display. Before the resurrection, that portrait remains tightly rolled and cannot be understood (thus the disciples fear and confusion before the resurrection)….However, with the resurrection the portrait of the crucified Jesus is unfurled and set within the incorruptible frame of the risen Lord so that all who see the Crucified One—declared by the illumination of the Spirit in the Risen One—might know their God and live.
The glory of God which to receive is to live—the glory for which all things exist, the glory that will illuminate the New Heavens and Earth—is nothing other than the crucified Jesus, declared victoriously in the body of the risen Lord wherein faith perceives the wounds of crucifixion now transfigured to emblems of peace, joy, and “glory as of the only begotten son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14).
The resurrection does not eclipse the crucifixion, it transfigures it and sets it on display as the crown jewel of God’s beauty. Similarly, in Christ, God does not erase the suffering of His people, but transfigures it to beauty in the light of the risen Lord.
