Wounded in the House of My Friends

And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands?  Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.

Zechariah 14:6

To me, this is one of the saddest verses in the Bible.  It is a prophetic verse dealing with the Jews as a nation, but I think that we can apply it several ways.  The question that He is asked and the answer that He gives are pointed and convicting.  They should make us think and they should make us even more thankful for His grace and His mercy.

The question is simply this: “What are these wounds in thine hands?”  That is a simple enough question.  They see that He has been wounded in His hands and, not knowing Him well enough, they are curious as to where He got those wounds.  His answer as to where those wounds in His hands came from is almost haunting and rings a tone of conviction still today:

“Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.”

He didn’t go into great detail.  He responded with a simple and perfectly fitting response.  While I was obviously not physically there as part of the mob that cried “crucify him!” “crucify him!,” two thousand years later, I can still feel the sting of that sentence.  I can see Him going to the cross with my sin.  While I may not have physically crucified Him, it was my guilt and sin that crucified Him.  Jesus is the “friend of sinners.”  He “came unto his own, and his own received him not.”  He came to His own people, and they crucified Him.  He was wounded in the house of His friends.

To make further application to us today, how often have we “wounded” Him?  How often have we sinned and grieved Him?  While we didn’t physically put the nails through His hands, could He say of us “I was wounded in the house of my friends?”  Let us think of this verse the next time we are tempted to sin.  What a convicting thought.