Suffering for Sinning - Lamentation

 Lamentations 1:20 (ESV)

“Look, O LORD, for I am in distress;

my stomach churns;

my heart is wrung within me,

because I have been very rebellious.

In the street the sword bereaves;

in the house it is like death.

The book of Lamentations is a series of five poems (each chapter makes one poem) where the author is lamenting the fall of Jerusalem specifically and the crushing of the spirit’s of a nation collectively.   Chapters 1,2, 4, 5 have 22 verses and each verse begins with the subsequent letter of the Hebrew alphabet (except chapter 5).  Chapter 3 is 66 verses because there are three verses per each letter in the Hebrew alphabet.   The point of all this is that the author is using a systematic method to convey the human emotion that comes from suffering due to sin.   In this book the enemy that is addressed is the suffering that has come from Israel’s rebellion against God.   In 586 BC, Babylon was allowed to capture and destroy Jerusalem.   Why?  The above verse tells us why.  The sins of the people have caught up to them and God is bringing His judgment for their sins into into their day-to-day lives.  Notice how the author describes the suffering in just this one verse.  He states that it has impacted the very body.   He is speaking metaphorically of Jerusalem but that does not remove the actual pain the really feel as a people.   Throughout the rest of the book we read about hunger pains and numerous discomfort they are experiencing.   God does not bring them comfort.  That is the theme of the book.  Sin (rebellion against God) has destroyed them and made their bodies ache in pain.   Sin is not an abstract aspect of our lives. It is a real thing that impacts our very being.  Note what John Owen stated about sin:

Every unmortified sin will certainly do two things: It will weaken the soul and deprive it of its vigor. It will darken the soul and deprive it of its comfort and peace.”

“Mortification prunes all the graces of God and makes room for them in our hearts to grow”

Commenting on Jame 1:14, Owen goes on to say:

James 1:14 (ESV)

14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

lust is still tempting and conceiving sin (James 1:14); in every moral action it is 

1) always either inclining to evil, 

2)or hindering from that which is good, 

3)or disframing the spirit from communion with God. 

Excerpt From

Overcoming Sin and Temptation

John Owen

Sin impacts our body, soul and spirit.  Lamentations is testament that sin destroys.   We suffer as a result of it.   God does not close His eyes to sin.  The only hope we have is to be covered in the blood of Christ so that when we sin all that God sees is His Beloved Son’s blood covering us.   Absent that truth, all we have is continuous suffering.