Psalm 38:8
I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart.

This is the agony of sin.  It has separated David from his God, and that is unbearable.  It has added a weight to his shoulders.  It has made him unwell.  It has overtaken his heart.  It has stolen his peace.  It has filled those places in him that used to be filled by God.  And that shatters him and causes him to mourn greatly.  There is a pain and unrest in the deepest parts of his heart for the sin in his life.

The loathsome disease of sin affects us in many ways.  It truly is like an infection that destroys the healthy and leaves destruction in its wake.  It’s a wound that spreads over every part of us.  It affects us physically and emotionally and mentally.  Honestly, it’s just painful.  We can hardly bear it all.  It is something that takes and takes from us until we have nothing left to give to it.

And on the cross, Jesus experienced a severe kind of anguish.  He felt the effects of humanity’s sin.  He bore the heavy burden of it all.  He experienced the physical torture of beatings and a crown of thorns and nail-piereced hands and feet.  He experienced the ridicule of a hateful mass of people mocking and condemning him with their words.  He dwelt in darkness.  He was forsaken by His Father.  He hurt, suffered, bled, and died, all because of sin.

Oftentimes, sin hurts us more than we recognize at first.  It tends to get down deeper than we think it can.  It spreads and infects and brings about death.  And at times it can affect us in the most severe kinds of ways.  It can leave us completely broken.  But there is a force more powerful.  There is something that can overcome.  There is the love and grace and mercy of God that meets us there in that painful place and offers a kind of healing that we can’t even imagine.  It is a balm that soothes the pain and covers over the wounds and changes us from the inside out.