Why Did Jesus Keep the Scars?

In The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey surfaces issues about Christ that we may overlook or simply never consider. 

One detail in the Easter stories has always intrigued me: Why did Jesus keep the scars from his crucifixion? Presumably he could have had any resurrected body he wanted, and yet he chose one identifiable mainly by scars that could be seen and touched. Why?

I believe the story of Easter would be incomplete without those scars on the hands, the feet, and the side of Jesus. When human beings fantasize, we dream of pearly straight teeth and wrinkle-free skin and sexy ideal shapes. We dream of an unnatural state: the perfect body. But for Jesus, being confined in a skeleton and human skin was the unnatural state. The scars are, to him, an emblem of life on our planet, a permanent reminder of those days of confinement and suffering.

Such scars serve as a constant reminder of the mammoth pain sin caused and to the very Son of God at that! We tend to underrate, or time softens the travesty, the horror of sin. We therefore, lose sight of the marvelous but ugly truth of what a shameful, ingloriously tragic event this was. But it must at least give us serious pause before we dismiss our many and various types of suffering and trial. Pressure is more than just the cause of making diamonds, it becomes the very force of God to form us into his gems of grace.